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RELIGIO DOCTORIS 



RELIGIO DOCTORIS 



MEDITATIONS UPON LIFE AND THOUGHT 
BY A RETIRED COLLEGE PRESIDENT 



Scxyv^ 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
G. STANLEY HALL, Ph.D., LL.D. 



I look for the New Teacher that shall . . . show that 

the Ought, that Duty, is one thing with Science, 

with Beauty, and with Joy. — Emerson. 




RICHARD G. BADGER 

THE GORHAM PRESS 
BOSTON 



Copyright 1913, by Richard G. Badger 
All rights reserved 



4>%tfi 



The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 



JAN 3 m 



CI. A3 62011 



TO 
CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL. D. 

THE LAYMAN IN RELIGION AND IN PHILOSOPHY 

whose election to the presidency of Harvard College resulted 

in the creation of the greatest university 

in the New World 

THIS TRIBUTE AND APPEAL TO THE SANITY OF THE LAY 
MIND 



DEDICATED 



INTRODUCTION 

The author of these essays, many years ago my 
student and friend, a man of culture, personal charm, 
and with special training in philosophy, lived for some 
time in the expectation of speedy death. In this con- 
dition he sought to fortify his own soul by formulating 
his personal convictions, in non-technical terms, con- 
cerning the supreme problems of human life. This he 
was able to do with a candor unalloyed by all prudential 
considerations as to how utter frankness, so often 
dangerous to men in his vocation, would affect his future 
career. Since his partial convalescence he has decid- 
ed, — upon the advice and wish of his friends,- — wisely 
and well, as I, and I believe all his readers will think, 
to make public these meditations, in the modest hope 
that they will interest and benefit others who are in- 
clined to face seriously the problems of life, mind, and 
destiny. 

In the first essay the argument succinctly stated is 
that right thinking is necessary to right living, and 
that, as the ethical idea is the only working hypoth- 
esis for the right conduct of life, this latter must be 
based upon a consideration of all the facts that enter 
into it. The next world must not dominate this, and 
there must be no "double housekeeping. " Perhaps the 
writer would not approve the slogan, "One world at a 
time, gentlemen, and this one now;" but no real good 
v 



vi INTRODUCTION 

here must be sacrificed or even imperiled by the hy- 
pothesis of immortality, nor must specialization or 
absorption in business dwarf the sum-total of human 
nature born in each of us. Making the very most and 
best of this life and this world, magnifying the here 
and the now, doing the present duty, is the best way to 
attain the chief end of man, here or hereafter. 

In the second essay he urges that, as this is a uni- 
verse, in which every atom is a part of a stupendous 
whole, it takes everything to explain anything, ampli- 
fying the moral of the "flower in the crannied wall." 
The least event not only has innumerable determinants, 
but affects the whole, which alone can be the complete 
cause of the tiniest part or event. The ethical implica- 
tion is obvious. Not only the life of each individual 
but his every serious deed affects in some degree the 
world itself. Probably the author would not say with 
Rowland Hazard that the ego is a creative first cause, 
but rather that it is itself a plexus of links in an endless 
chain, as much caused as causing. His view, at any 
rate, is not inaccordant with Spinoza's idea sub specie 
eternitatis. 

In the next essay we are taught that moral evil is 
the result of human incapacity. This makes man sel- 
fish and un- and anti-social. Real knowledge ripened 
into wisdom is the only cure of both physical and moral 
ills, and a sound education is the greatest of all healers. 
In this chapter the author anticipates some of the best 
precepts and practices of Du Bois and Marcinowski, 
the first of whom uses careful, coherent thinking as a 



INTRODUCTION vn 

cure for subtle brain, and even nerve, troubles, and the 
latter of whom prescribes philosophies somewhat as 
physicians do regimens. 

Lastly, as to the relations between happiness and 
virtue, we are taught that the joys of sense can con- 
tribute very little to happiness. Egoism is good, but 
only so far as it is intelligent. The power to enjoy 
grows directly as does capacity for sympathy. Even 
non-moral pleasures may be made means to moral 
enjoyment. To be true to our own selves brings a joy 
that abides, for the welfare of society is only the sum 
of that of the individuals composing it. The value of 
a sound education is that it makes for virtue, and this 
is the author's melioristic creed. The greatest happi- 
ness for us is not beyond the reach of our power to 
attain it. Love is the highest, and it teaches us the 
transcendent beauty of the universe. 

These few catch-phrases may inadequately indicate 
the general trend, though they by no means do justice 
to the attractive personal qualities, the happy illustra- 
tions, or the utter abandon of the ingenuousness of the 
author. There is no flavor of the study, the library, or 
the school-room in these pages, but a certain distinct 
charm of style, almost as if in despite of the abandon, 
of the unabated seriousness, that pervades these pages. 
It is this that contributes to their optimism, which is 
the prevalent tone throughout. Their perusal will 
leave the reader, as it has left me, sobered, and wond- 
ering whether, if I were thus impelled to sum up my 
own fundamental convictions, I could possibly, despite 
my more years of life and teaching, bring forth con- 



vii INTRODUCTION 

elusions so sane and helpful, even now, if the shadow 
of the Great Reaper fell across my path and prompted 
me to summon all my resources in the way of philoso- 
phic contemplation. Who shall say that the writer 
does not owe more or less of his restoration to health 
to the mental medicine he has here provided and offers 
to others? 

G. Stanley Hall 
Clark University 
August, 1918 



PREFATORY NOTE 

In the endeavor to illustrate his thought fully and 
to forestall possible objections by the utmost fairness 
to opinions opposed to his own, the author has made 
three of the following essays so long that he has deemed 
it wise in the case of these three to add a marginal 
summary of the argument; but in the shorter essay on 
Explanation a marginal argument seemed unnecessary 
and has accordingly been omitted. 



CONTENTS 
Introduction by G. Stanley Hall v 

I 

A Revery wherein the Following Essays are 
Conceived 9 

II 

Philosophy and Everyday Life 13 

in 

The Nature of Explanation and the True 
Interpretation of the Principle of Cause 
and Effect 55 

IV 

The Problem of Evil 78 

V 

Happiness and Morality 117 



RELIGIO DOCTORIS 



RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

I 

A REVERY 

WHEREIN THE FOLLOWING ESSAYS ARE CONCEIVED 

It is the first of October, — perhaps the last that I 
shall ever see, for I seem to grow gradually weaker in- 
stead of stronger, — a beautiful, soft Indian Summer 
day, and as I sit in a little pine grove that commands a 
wide Thuringian landscape, full of peace and beauty 
(despite the fact that the nearest large building is a 
great, ugly barracks), the perception of the beauty of 
the world, which has so often blessed and cheered my 
life, and which must be, in large part, the burden of any 
message I may have for my fellow men, comes to me 
with renewed freshness and strength. 

How charming it all is! The little clump of ever- 
greens near the edge of which I sit with my back against 
a trunk, so that my head is shielded from the sun, which 
still shines all about me and increases the balsamic fra- 
grance which makes a pine wood so delightful, is not 
quite on the crest of the upland from which my view is 
obtained; and not far away is a grove of chestnuts sur- 
rounded on every side by cleared fields, some lying fal- 
low, while on others the ungarnered crops still stand. 
This grove is not large, but the trees are strong, healthy 
and graceful, and in their autumn dress of ruddy brown 



10 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

and bronze and yellow and still with many a splatch of 
green, both light and dark, the whole stands out most 
pleasingly against the soft blue sky. There is just a 
suggestion of haze on the horizon, but the sky is almost 
cloudless and there is only enough motion in the air to 
keep it fresh and balmy and to prevent the softness of 
the day from degenerating into sultriness. Over the 
crest of the upland peep the tops of some houses and the 
trees about them, giving a hint of peaceful home life 
near at hand, that adds to the charm of the scene. In 
every other direction the slopes and plains and valleys 
of Thuringia spread out for miles before me; not far 
away is a little city, and beyond it the landscape, more 
largely cleared than wooded, is dotted with many quiet 
little villages. 

Yes! the world is full of beauty; and beautiful as is 
the actual world as we know it, sweet as life is to us 
with all its sorrow and misery, there is far more of 
potential beauty in life than we have yet realized. 
Why is it, then, that there is so much unhappiness in 
life? Can human effort do nothing for the cure of 
human wretchedness? And if human effort can do 
anything, what kind of effort? Shall we accomplish 
our purpose by building railroads and steamships and 
thus extending the field of civilization? Shall we do it 
by studying mathematics and physics and chemistry 
and biology, or perhaps by teaching history and litera- 
ture? Shall we do it by building churches or schools 
or by carving statues, painting pictures or composing 
symphonies? Shall we do it by loving? I, now, what 
can I do? 



A RE VERY 11 

Has not this question, have not these questions dis- 
turbed the hearts of all of us at times? Why do I sit 
idly by while my brothers suffer, although I have the 
prospect of months of life and ability to work before me? 
Is it really because I feel that nothing that can be done 
is worth while? No, it is not that; I have the belief, 
more or less common among civilized men, that all such 
things as I have mentioned — the railroad building, the 
picture painting, the chemistry and the religious or- 
ganizations^ — may help to make the world a better 
dwelling place for man. Is it, then, that I feel that all 
is being done that can be done, and that there is nothing 
I can do for my fellow men, now that I am not actively 
engaged in my profession? Not quite; perhaps all 
thoughtful and loving men have their moments of 
exaltation, when they feel that they see some aspect of 
life more clearly than their fellows, and that it would be 
well if all the world could share their insight. Why, 
then, thou dubious friend of man, hast thou not shouted 
thy wisdom from the housetop? why have not thy 
brothers, in their moments of exaltation, cried their 
messages aloud for all men to hear? 

Probably one thing that keeps those of us silent who 
have not made literature a profession, is that before 
we find the opportunity to express ourselves we are 
likely to have passed the age of thirty-five and to have 
recovered some of the pristine modesty of childhood, 
and we remember those fatal words, "There is nothing 
new under the sun!" And, further than this, I dis- 
trust preaching; I have long felt that if a man believes 
himself to be possessed of some truth which he would 



12 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

like to impart to his fellows, he should live it rather than 
preach it. Example is so much better than precept; 
preaching is so cheap ! 

Yet preaching has its place. We may well grant 
that he who preaches without at the same time doing 
his best to live in accordance with his own preaching 
deserves little consideration, and yet also admit that 
he who cannot himself climb far may nevertheless point 
the way up the mountain side. And if my death be real- 
ly near,as has lately seemed not improbable,perhaps I am 
justified in trying to utter the truth that is in me, even 
though I only say imperfectly what may be gathered 
from the different utterances of those who have already 
spoken; perhaps under the circumstances it is right for 
me to try to express the fundamental convictions that 
have made my life a predominantly happy one (albeit 
a life in which the struggle for self-support and for the 
knowledge that should be helpful toward the solution 
of the problems of cxistence,has been carried on through- 
out under physical weakness, and with no dear ones of 
my own about me to brighten life by the sweet joy of 
home — a joy which, paradoxical as it may seem, per- 
haps those alone fully appreciate who have it not), and 
which leave me now serene and happy in the contempla- 
tion of death, — a premature death, before the age of 
forty, — although I am wholly without faith in the be- 
lief that seems so dear to many of my fellows, the 
belief in individual personal immortality and in the 
existence of an Almighty Personal Creator and Ruler of 
the Universe, who loves us as his children. 



II 

PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 

As a man thinketh, so is he 

Proverb 

Antithesis is the bane of sound thinking, I some- 
times think, and therefore of simple, natural, wholesome, 
Contrast and unaffected, large-hearted living. We are 
separation. inordinately fond of contrast in every 
department of life. In the realm of myth our fore- 
fathers had their good and evil spirits, and we must 
have our God and our Devil; and even in the ethical 
and religious thought of the nineteenth and twentieth 
centuries the traditional division of mankind into sheep 
and goats, into saints and sinners, dies hard, although 
fortunately for the sanity of our thought, it may indeed 
to be said to be dying. The subject is an interesting 
one, and were unlimited time at our disposal hundreds 
of illustrations could be given of the tendency to sepa- 
rate that with which life and thought must deal into 
hard and fast divisions which do not correspond to 
reality. 

That at the bottom of this erroneous, this exaggera- 
tive tendency of mankind there is something reasonable, 
I do not for a moment question; for I am convinced 
that no error would live for a day if it did not 
contain an element of truth. For the purposes of 
13 



14 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

science as well as for the purposes of practical, every- 
day life, we must of course discriminate. The stage of 
, . .^ . division and classification is surely one of 

Its justification , " 

found in its the most important stages of scientific 

purpose— re- i • i i i» , 

combination progress; and, m the realm ot everyday 
more perfect life, if the wide-awake farmer would know 

whole. . 

what crop or crops he can cultivate to the 
best advantage, and what are the most favorable condi- 
tions for the cultivation of the most suitable variety of 
the chosen grain or vegetable or fruit, he must at the 
outset be able to distinguish clearly between the differ- 
ent kinds, he must separate the varieties of grain, for 
instance, plant them by themselves, and carefully ob- 
serve their respective growths. But important as are 
distinctions, contrasts and divisions for the various 
purposes of practical life and for the preliminary stages 
of science, we should not forget that their significance 
is limited. For the gourmand edible mushrooms be- 
long in a class which also includes deer, chicken, fish, 
oysters, wheat, peaches, radishes, and, if he be a Chinese, 
bird's nests; while a toadstool, an iron nail, a diamond, 
a pair of boots, a yacht, a granite boulder, a copper 
penny, a rattlesnake and a clod of earth are all members 
of another, contrasted class of non-edibles. For him 
the division of things into these two classes is of the 
utmost importance, and the distinction between edible 
mushrooms and toadstools is, to say the least, funda- 
mental. But for the botanist this distinction is a very 
slight one; for him these two things belong to the same 
general class. For the merchant, again, a still different 
classification of the things mentioned above would have 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 15 

to be made, a classification that would as little resemble 
that of the gourmand as it would that of the botanist. 
We should bear in mind, however, not alone that the 
classification of, and the distinctions between, the 
things we deal with in science and in life have merely a 
relative, not a permanent and essential value, but also 
that just as in practical life we distinguish and separate 
in order that the things thus set apart may be put 
with other things into some new combination which has 
for the immediate purpose of the worker a practical 
value, so too in science, distinctions, divisions and 
separations are not final ; we separate in thought for the 
purposes of study, in order that we may recombine all 
of which the human mind is cognizant into a more orderly, 
more perfect whole. To regard the various classes of 
objects and ideas with which we have to do in our 
thinking and living, as absolutely separate, unrelated 
things, to lock them up forever in separate, watertight 
compartments, between which there is no means of 
communication, is, in the larger meaning of science, 
highly unscientific, and it leads to deplorable narrow- 
ness in practical life. 

This tendency to regard things as finally disposed of 
when we have given them a name and put them into 
separate classes, — which tendency may perhaps be re- 
garded as an indication of arrested development in 
scientific thought, — has fostered a high degree of 
satisfaction in the most positive antitheses; a disposi- 
tion that has found theoretical expression in the widely 
accepted philosophy of Kant, and that also showed 
itself in the manner in which the psychologists of the 



16 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

last generation talked of the feelings, the intellect and 
the will as entirely distinct entities, instead of different 
The ose phases, different aspects of the life, the 
lost sight of activity, of the one being, man. But the 

when the pro- # «" <=>» 

cess stops with vagaries of the scholar hurt the world very 

the positing of ° J 

distinctions be- little as compared with the harm that is 

tween things, r 

the conceptions done when a like false attitude toward real- 

of which are . . . 

then developed, ity is taken by men m everyday life, when 

in isolation, J J ,,./•», 

until they have the average man reads life amiss. And 

become incon- 1 1 1 • -n l • 

sistent with one that he has done and is still domg this, 
there can be no doubt. We must of course 
read the world somewhat amiss, so long as we see it 
only in part, not as a perfect whole. Every thought- 
ful man must realize how impossible it is that he or his 
fellows should be free from error in the present stage of 
human development, to say the least. But it does 
not follow that we need be quite so wrong-headed 
as we are; we should not be so if we would keep 
in mind the knowledge we already have, if we 
would make a more earnest effort to unify our 
knowledge, to make of it a consistent whole instead of 
a collection of facts, or groups of facts (and theories), 
entirely isolated from one another. Let us remember 
that so able and lovable a man as the late Professor 
Henry Drummond only became a real leader of men, 
a true apostle, a man with a message, when he awoke 
to the fact, as he himself expressed it in his introduction 
to "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," that his 
conceptions of religion and of science ought not to be 
kept absolutely separate in water-tight compartments 
of his brain, — when he realized that, if his religious and 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 17 

his scientific ideas were both true, they must have some 
relation to each other, they must at least be consistent. 
Most of us are content to go through life holding 
absolutely contradictory ideas, — as that no gentleman 
will permit another to insult him without 
Many have resenting the insult, even though to do so 

come to con- D ° 

sider that par- cos t him his life; that a Christian must 

adox and anti- t , , 

nomies are nor- forgive every iniury; and that a Christian 

mal, that one & J , ,. , „ 

truth may be gentleman offers us the highest type of 

contradictory of b . . ° , ,, „ 

another,— a no- hie, an ideal toward which we should all 

tion that, de- . 

Uberateiy ac- strive. Of course to dull, prosaic, niatter- 

cepted and con- , 

sistentiy foi- ol-lact people, who do not know any better 

lowed OUt, , , n ^ l • l 

would dissipate than to have confidence in their own mental 

our universe . • 1 1 

into chaos. processes, it must seem either that one can- 
not be at once a gentleman and a Christian, 
or else that the conception of gentleman or that of 
Christian above adopted must be at fault. But why has 
this not occurred to any of the enthusiastic Christian 
gentlemen who have held these theories during the last 
thousand years or so, and who still hold them? For 
two reasons, I believe. Chiefly because they have 
very rarely put their theses side by side, as I have done 
above; but instead, to use Professor Drummond's ex- 
pression again, have kept them in different water-tight 
compartments of their brains. In one field of thought, 
having its own associations, arises the conception of the 
scrupulous man of honor, who must be ever ready to 
give his life to keep his honor absolutely untarnished — 
a fantastic notion, if you will, often associated with 
much that is absurd, but still noble, in that it teaches 
men to prefer an ideal good to the mere continuance of 



18 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

physical existence, puts self-respect before length of 
life, and has helped to keep alive in man's breast his 
most heroic attribute, courage, the feeling which assures 
him that death with honor is far more to be desired 
than the longest life if one must demean himself to 
enjoy it. In another field of thought, on the other 
hand, with an entirely different set of associations, 
arises the conception of Christian humility, self-sacri- 
fice, and Christ-like forgiveness — again a beautiful 
thought, in so far as it leads a man to put love for God 
and his brother men before his individual enjoyment 
of the good things of physical existence. When we 
analyze these two conceptions — that of the Christian 
and that of the gentleman — carefully, we find that 
there is something in common between them — the pre- 
ference of ideal to material good, — and it is not very 
surprising that they should both be held by the same 
man so long as he does not put them directly side by 
side. But occasionally these two doctrines of forgive- 
ness and revenge are brought face to face, and still 
their votaries profess allegiance to both! How is this 
possible? Is it not because our teachers, our acknowl- 
edged intellectual leaders, have encouraged us to con- 
sider it not only tolerable, but rather a fine thing, to 
maintain paradoxes and antinomies, — which they have 
sought to justify by large assertions and vague assump- 
tions as to the utter separateness of different "worlds 
of thought"? 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 19 

Thus it happens that today, after all the world's 
great prophets and scientists have offered us their gifts, 
^ a -l we are in some respects farther from the 

The effort to ^ 

unify our con- truth than in the day when Zarathustra 

ceptions con- ^ 

temnedas un- or Socrates or Jesus first walked the earth. 

scientific specu- 

lation, unfavor- Because today we will not see hie whole. 

ably contrasted . " " . 

with the study Our educated classes have a pseudo-scien- 

of details, to 

which study tmc contempt tor anything that is general 

th ? term j u • j e u 

science is ap- and comprehensive and tor anyone who, 

forgetfuiness like Bacon, would take all knowledge for 

that nothing his province. This is a very natural result 

apprehended of the rapid progress we have made in the 

refations, and details of science, in gathering material for 

therefore that ■, 1 1 1 * i- 

no department human knowledge. As a generation we 

of science can .-, . . . . . » 

be safely and are m that most trying stage ot progress m 
vated a without" knowledge, when, having gathered together 

continued refer- » o . j • • 

ence to and fre- an enormous mass ot tacts and opinions, we 
son with°th?ngs~ are in danger of being swamped by our ma- 

outside it. 



terial, and like Thoreau's unfortunate who 
was owned by his farm, who with the title to the ances- 
tral acres had inherited a clog upon all independent mo- 
tion and freedom of action, we are not master of, but are 
mastered by our knowledge. We endeavor to conceal 
our embarrassment from ourselves by the favorite 
resort of the -pseudo, or perhaps it would be fairer to say 
the se?/iz-scientist — definition; by a parade of sounding 
terms, by pointing to an imposing array of elaborately 
defined and delimited fields of human investigation and 
activity. We speak fluently of science and of com- 
merce, of art and of nature, of the field of philosophy 
and the field of industrial activity; and within these 



20 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

several fields we accord honorable recognition to scores 
of lesser fields, the field of literature, of music, of paint- 
ing, of sculpture, the field of chemistry, of geology, of 
botany, the field of political economy and that of ethnol- 
ogy, etc. Sometimes, indeed, we mention life, either 
as the subject-matter of the special science of biology 
or for the sake of rhetorical contrast, as when we speak 
of life and art or of philosophy and life. But in so 
doing, as in our unfortunate antitheses between man 
and nature or nature and spirit or nature 

The unity of all . \ 

science, art and and history, we only emphasize our failure 

philosophy, as . . 

the knowledge, to realize the truth that all of art and 

expression and . . • . .. . . 

interpretation science and philosophy are but the inter- 
pretation of Life, — that wonderful physical, 
emotional, mental and spiritual sentiency and activity 
of man, through which he finds a world within and 
about him to which he must adjust his activity, and in 
which his existence is rich and happy or starved and 
wretched in proportion as he does adjust himself well 
or ill thereto; for the purpose of which adjustment he 
must understand, or interpret to himself aright, this 
world with which his life has to do! Hence the signi- 
ficance of art, of science, and of philosophy. In and 
of themselves they not only have no value, they have 
no existence, they are but empty terms, hollow sounds. 
And yet we prate of "art for art's sake. " It is rank 
nonsense, yet men of talent and of such education as the 
isolation of unphilosophical attitude of our age has 
made possible gravely discuss, not whether 
art for art's sake exists, but whether it is good! But 
what is art? Can it exist without a content? Is it 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYBxiY LIFE 21 

not such an expression of something that the artist 
has himself thought or felt as shall suggest to others a 
corresponding feeling or idea? And does not this 
mean that it is an expression of an experience of life, 
which shall affect the lives of others; and therefore 
that it has, must have, a value for life? To express 
something is the life of art; that which, expressing 
nothing, exists for itself alone, is not art. 

If we turn to what is called science, we find that the 
attitude of many of those who are regarded as educated 

is just as bad. Anecdotes are continually 
indifference of being told of distinguished votaries of some 
practical utility, particular branch of science, setting forth 

their disposition to attribute scientific 
value to a truth in direct proportion to its practical 
uselessness. Of course there is some real significance, 
some glimmer of reason at the bottom of this nonsense, 
as there is at the bottom of all error. But what is it? 
In a German market town I have sometimes seen a 
blindfolded cow quietly hauling a load of produce 
through a busy street. The simple-minded beast, 
accustomed to a quiet country life, could not well en- 
dure the distractions of a thoroughfare, and so 'performed 
its immediate duty best when it did not knoiv where it was 
going or what was its relation to what was going on 
about it. Now the man of science when he has once got- 
ten upon the track of some uniformity in nature, or even 
of some mere fact, follows it out patiently, regardless of 
whether it have any immediate economic value. For 
the accomplishment of his immediate purpose it may 
be better that he should not be distracted by considera- 



22 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

tions of the practical end of his activity. And so he 
is justified in putting on blinders, or in other words, in 
saying to the world: "Do not bother me with your 
demand for practical results. I am not in the least con- 
cerned as to whether you can make the slightest eco- 
nomic use of the knowledge I am trying to get and with 
which I busy myself. My business is not to ascertain 
what is useful, but what is true. The great practical 
discoveries and inventions about which you make such 
a to-do, have perhaps as much scientific value as the 
isolated facts with which men of my calling busy them- 
selves, but they do not compare in the least in scienti- 
fic value with the generalizations, the uniformities in 
nature, the so-called laws of nature, which my fellow- 
workers have from time to time suggested and estab- 
lished, and which I am endeavoring to establish, even 
though these laws of nature be in regard to something 
for which neither you nor I can perceive the slightest 
economic value. Go back to your machine shop and 
attend to your business, and leave me in peace to 
attend to mine!" Such an attitude on the part of the 
man of science is reasonable and right enough in fact, 
but it would not be so if the words we have supposed 
him to utter were the last words that could be said 
upon the subject, if they expressed all the justification 
there was for his position. Back of his assertion that 
his business is not to ascertain what is useful, but what 
is true, what is, lies the moral certainty that all knowl- 
edge is useful; that the more facts we have mastered, 
the greater the possibility of our discovering the 
habits of the Universe; and that the more perfectly 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 23 

we understand the Universe the better shall we be able 
to adjust ourselves to it, the more complete, the richer 
and happier our lives will be. A fact I discover today- 
may have no apparent use for you or for me today or a 
decade hence; but it may be that a thousand years 
hence, to some patient worker in a seemingly quite 
different field of science, it will prove to be of service, 
perhaps of slight service, perhaps of great. In a word, 
sooner or later, here or elsewhere, to me or to some one 
else, every item of knowledge has the possibility of 
value, a practical value, a value for life. And that, 
not "knowledge for the sake of knowledge" (really a 
meaningless phrase), is the justification for pure scien- 
tific activity regardless of immediate value. Let us 
remember that the scientist who prides himself upon 
the fact that his scientific activity has no value for 
anything outside of itself or for anybody but the scien- 
tist, and that it exists for its own sake alone, and is 
valuable only as science — let us remember that such a 
scientist is after all only priding himself upon the fact 
that he does his work better in blinders than with a 
full view of the world in which he moves; and if it 
really be true that he is regardless of anything outside 
his special field, and does not care whether his activity 
has or shall ever have the slightest extrinsic worth, 
valuing it only as an intellectual exercise, then he is as 
narrow-minded, as much below the full stature of man, 
the heir of the ages, and the hereditary interpreter of 
nature — as much below the full stature of man, with 
his boundless interests, as that shopkeeper who allowed 
his business to so engross his life that it was said of him 
that he was born a man and died a grocer I 



24 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

Current conception as to the significance of philoso- 
phy are as artificial, as unintelligent, as false and 
Philosophy inadequate, as are those in regard to art 
versus life. an( j sc i ence \y e hear such phrases as 
''philosophy versus life," as though there were any 
philosophy other than the attempt to interpret life 
and its theatre the world; or as though life without 
philosophy were fit for, nay, were possible for any being 
but a brute or a vegetable. It is true that the simple- 
minded man of every-day life, a day-laborer in Europe 
or America or a savage in the South Sea Islands, may 
not dignify his theory of life by the name of philosophy, 
and he may have taken it whole from his father or his 
priest, but, simple or elaborate, complete or incomplete, 
consistent or inconsistent, clearly or all but unconscious- 
ly held, every man not an idiot has, must have some 
sort of philosophy of life, be it ever so vague and hazy. 

Art, science, philosophy alike exist only for the 
interpretation and enlargement of life; and it seems 
to me that our most crying need today is, I will not say 
a true philosophy of life, but, let me rather say, the 
perception that such a philosophy is a fundamental 
desideratum. 

We are prevented from realizing this by causes that 
have already been suggested. The tendency of the 
Philosophy re- a g e toward specialization has led us to 
franswndentai l°°k upon philosophy as a special depart- 
IpSffro^l real ment of human investigation with which 
ISi SJiSastic" no one Dut tne philosophic specialist has 
for the few. an y concern> By the almost unanimous 
consent of the philosophic specialists and the rest 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 25 

of mankind PHILOSOPHY is regarded as some- 
thing very abstruse and difficult; and by the great 
majority of mankind, including not only most of 
the outer barbarians who have not devoted them- 
selves to its study, but also no inconsiderable number 
of those who have formally pursued it, philosophy 
is furthermore regarded as something quite useless 
and often as something highly fantastic. Many who 
pass for educated men shrug then shoulders at the mere 
mention of philosophy, saying that they would not 
advise anyone who had not a special predilection for 
cobweb-spinning and hair-splitting to waste his time 
upon it, when there is so much to be done in the field of 
practical effort and demonstrative science. This is 
hardly to be wondered at when we consider how largely 
philosophy has been identified with metaphysics, and 
that the so-called philosophers, with the characteristic 
abandon of the specialist, cutting themselves loose from 
the manifold interests of a broad, symmetrical, practical 
life, which would have kept them sane, have so often 
launched out into all sorts of fantastic theories having 
no relation to practical life. 

But what is philosophy? Various definitions have 
been offered at different times and in different places, 
yet I believe that a consensus of the com- 
Phiiosophy is petent would now recognize the substantial 
conception"^ correctness of the conception that philoso- 
reaiity. phy [ s the theory, not of this or that de- 

partment of human thought, but the theory 
of the Universe as a whole, and that the aim of philoso- 
phy is a consistent conception of all that is. The essen- 



26 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

tial thing in a philosophy is not that it shall give a 
complete explanation of all that is (that would be 
universal science), but that it shall so take account of 
all that is that one's conception of the different elements 
of human experience which constitute our universe shall 
be mutually consistent with one another. If one's 
conception of A and B and C and D, of chemistry and 
spirit and ether and space and matter and the principle 
of causality and geology and the development of the 
human mind and economics and religion and art, are 
mutually consistent, or, let us say, are not inconsistent 
with one another, then may his philosophy be sound and 
true, even though he be very far indeed from having at- 
tained to a full explanation of the relation of these various 
objects of contemplation to one another. No one, in 
the present stage of human knowledge, can reasonably 
demand that our philosophy shall afford a complete 
explanation of all that is ; but while it need not be com- 
plete, it must be consistent, the world may well demand 
of us that our philosophy shall consist of such a con- 
ception of life and the universe as shall contain no 
contradictions, and also that it shall not attain a seem- 
ing consistency by ignoring any part of reality. Phil- 
osophy is not abstruse theory; it means simply a reason- 
able conception of that which is. It is the recognition 
that truth is one, and that no individual truth in the 
universe can be inconsistent with any other truth. As 
such it is the touchstone of science, and tells us that if 
that which we have come to look upon as a truth, or law, 
of chemical science is really contradictory of or incon- 
sistent with that which we have regarded as a truth of 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 27 

mathematics or of history or of religion, then we must 
renew our investigations and reformulate our theories, 
for one or both of the supposed truths must be, in part 
at least, false. Both of the supposed truths may indeed 
approximate the truth; one may be exactly true and 
the other may lack little of precise truth; but in so far 
as they do contradict one another, in so far, we may be 
sure, the attempted formulation of one or of both 
truths is, as it then stands, at fault. Let us hold fast 
to this axiom of common sense, which is fundamental 
to reason and therefore to philosophy! To disregard, 
or to juggle with, this self-evident truth, is to make 
sane thought and sound philosophy impossible, for it 
is to foreswear reason, and, instead of a universe, to 
accept chaos. 

If philosophy be thus understood, I think it will not 
be questioned that each one of us may and should strive 

for a true philosophy of life, a consistent 
Philosophy a conception of all that is, a conception of 
human nature, reality as constituting a universe, not a 

chaos. We not only may and should; as 
I have already intimated, we must; all sane minds that 
have not been grossly misled by those to whom they have 
felt justified in looking for guidance, do, more or less 
consciously, reach after a consistent theory of that 
which is, or, in other words, a philosophy of life. If 
there is any sense in which the will is free, if volition 
plays any part in life, then we must strive to under- 
stand the universe of which we are a part, to get a con- 
spectus of it, a consistent view of it as a whole, so that 
we may know how to direct our life in it. But un- 



28 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

fortunately those to whom, on account of their position, 
their learning, their mental training and their spiritual 
experience, the mass of mankind have felt that they 
could safely look for guidance, have so often been 
false guides, blind leaders of the blind, that that which 
serves as a philosophy of life for most of us today is 
pitifully weak, a thing of shreds and tatters, very often 
indeed allowing us, almost compelling us, to assert 
gravely the most contradictory things. 

It is not my purpose at this time to set forth and 
defend a particular philosophy of life. My purpose is 
merely (1) to direct attention to our care- 
Fauity phiioso- lessness and wrongheadedness — to the care- 
our lives. lessness and wrongheadedness of the so- 

called educated world as a whole — in the 
matter of a philosophy of life, and (2) to emphasize 
the fact that this false thought seriously affects our 
lives. 

Do you believe that the physical world came into 

existence about six thousand years ago, as a result of a 

process of creation effected in six days by 

illustrations of the personal spirit God, and do you also 

inconsistency in . . . 

thought. believe m the truths of biology, geology, 

chemistry and physics as presented by the 
ablest students of these various sciences and verified 
in part by your own observation and experiment? Or 
do you recognize the inconsistency between the former 
and the latter beliefs, and accept the one rather than the 
other; and if so, what is the underlying principle in 
accordance with which you have reached your deter- 
mination? 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 29 

Do you believe that your Creator has positively and 
expressly forbidden you and all pious and obedient 
children of men to carve a statue or make any physical 
representation of any natural object to be found on 
land or sea or of any heavenly being that has been 
imagined? and do you also believe that the Christian 
artists who spent their lives in decorating the churches 
of Europe with paintings and carving of heavenly beings, 
men, and things, were giving an innocent expression 
to their religious sentiments; and do you believe that 
representative art has a legitimate place in human life 
and in the development of the human spirit? 1 Or do 
you accept the prohibition and deny the innocence of 
representative art, or reject the prohibition and be- 
lieve in the propriety of such art? And in either case, 
what is it in your philosophy of life that leads you to 
this decision? 

Do you believe in predestination, of God or Fate or 
Nature — do you believe in necessity, or in free will, in 
arbitrary choice? Or in both! and why? Do you 
believe that man's life on earth is, I will not say a 
pilgrimage through a vale of tears, but merely a 'pren- 
tice period for the human spirit, incomparably short 
as compared with the remainder of eternity in which 
the spirit of man is to live, and that physical life and 
death concern the body of man alone, his will and his 



1 The Mohammedans, whose sacred scripture contains a prohibi- 
tion practically identical with that contained in the Hebrew decalogue 
(and doubtless borrowed from it) take this commandment literally, 
and have obeyed it, accepting the check to artistic and scientific 
development that is involved in such obedience. 



30 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

emotional and intellectual activity continuing forever 
after physical death, unless God shall annihilate them 
as a punishment for sin or in accordance with a pre- 
destinated plan determined upon by Him before the 
birth of the being in question? Or on the other hand, 
do you believe that man's emotional, intellectual and 
volitional activity are the inner aspects of his physical 
existence, with which they are in life associated; that 
life is one; that feeling, thought and will are the neces- 
sary concomitants, the natural expression, of life in all 
the higher organisms, and that they are dependent upon 
the physical substratum of that life; that thought is the 
function of brain activity much as digestion is the 
function of the activity of the alimentary canal, al- 
though neither thought nor digestion is itself a physical 
entity? And what is your reason for holding the one 
rather than the other belief ? 

One may say perhaps that the answer to a number 
of the questions just proposed is of very little practical 

importance. But surely a careful con- 
Reaction of consideration of the subject will show that 
o'fconS.ct? 1 '" tn e answer to the last inquiry is of great 
ouJ S treatme b nt ethical significance. And this is not the 
of evil. on ]y one j-j^ jj as important practical 

bearings. Our discussion of the Problem 
of Evil must, I think, indicate how great a part the 
answer to the question of necessity or free will must 
play in determining our attitude toward evil, our con- 
duct in the presence of evil, our treatment of the evil- 
doer. Were evil absolutely fortuitous, without rhyme 
or reason, so that no amount of study or of foresight 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 31 

would enable us to diminish it or to avoid it, its ethical 
significance would be slight indeed. Were evil the 
result of arbitrary choice and gratuitous malicious 
volition, we might meet it with vengeance. But if 
evil is simply the necessary consequence of the imper- 
fect adaptation of the individual to his immediate 
environment — whether the evil be physical or moral, 
whether it come directly from external nature or 
through the agency of a fellow being — then to over- 
come evil we must direct all our efforts to the mastery 
of science and the development of human nature (to 
which the mastery of science is a means). 2 This cer- 
tainly is a very practical conclusion. 

But leaving the question of determinism versus arbi- 
trary choice, it seems to me that the whole conduct of 
life is dependent upon our estimate of the 
Great practical relative importance of the present, earthlv 

importance of , 

our estimate of hie as compared with our hypothetical 

the relative .... m 

value of our future spiritual existence. lo one who 
existence as confidently believes that through the im- 
a possible future mortality of the individual soul an eternity 

existence in a „ . „ , . . ...... 

world beyond, of existence lor his conscious individual 

self is open to every man who tries to obey 

the teachings of his religion as to the will of God, and 

that this earthly life is merely an infinitesimally brief 

2 If I were required to give in a few words my own answer to the 
question of Determinism or Free Will, I should say that the will is 
subjectively free but objectively determined. That is to say, a 
man is free to do, can do (within necessary physical limitations, of 
course), what he wills, what he chooses to do. But if the principle 
of causality (see my discussion of "The Meaning of Explanation and 
the True Interpretation of the Principle of Cause and Effect) has any 
validity, there is some ground, some reason, for the choice that each 



32 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

prelude thereto, having no other significance than to 
test his readiness to take the first step toward the 
eternal life, — what does it matter whether he spends 
his life like an Indian fakir, standing on one leg in the 
same spot with arms outstretched, or devotes it to 
picking oakum ; whether he dreams it away in a cloister, 
or lives wholly for the investigation and exposition of 
the uses of the ablative case in Sanskrit; whether he 
gives all his waking hours to becoming master of the 
behaviour of sodium in all possible chemical combina- 
tions, or to piling up a fortune, or whether instead of 
all these ideals he tries to live the largest, fullest life of 
which his nature is capable, mastering as far as possible 
all that has yet been learned of the wonderful Universe 
in which he lives, and so exercising all the faculties of 
his nature — physical and mental, emotional and moral 
— as to become as complete and symmetrical a human 
being as his own natural endowments and the present 
stage of human progress makes possible? It is true 
that the last-mentioned course might possibly make 
the few moments that are to be spent here on earth, 
preliminary to launching into one's true life in eternity, 
a little more enjoyable and useful than they would 
otherwise be; but on the other hand, such a course 

man in fact makes, i. e. there must be something to determine what 
he will choose. And in fact his choice in each case is determined by 
the joint action of heredity and environment— by the relation between 
the present external conditions, the material for choice, and the man 
himself, as constituted by his whole past history up to the instant of 
choice and by the life experience of his ancestors and his race — a 
complete knowledge of which (of course an impossibility for any 
finite being) would enable any third person to predict with absolute 
certainty the choice that would be made under given conditions. 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 33 

demands considerable mental as well as physical ac- 
tivity, and there is no little danger that it might dis- 
tract one's attention from the future life; and so far as 
the usefulness of such a course is concerned, it has to 
do mainly, if not wholly, with the mere earthly well- 
being of one's fellows, which should not be very highly 
valued by an Immortal Soul, especially in view of the 
fact that a cloistered life of prayer and pious medita- 
tion might contribute to their spiritual welfare, which 
is infinitely more important! 

I wish that I could make clear to others how vastly 

important I feel the antithesis between these two 

points of view to be; but I hardly expect 

The dualism to do so, for, while the practical effects of 

involved in 

"other-world- the difference are really very great, they 

liness" its great . . J J S ' , 

practical evil, are less obvious than subtile, or, rather, 
the more obvious differences are not the 
most important ones. The essence of the difference 
seems to be this: that those who believe that a man's 
three score years and ten are but a mere prelude to his 
eternal existence, all hold that a man's spiritual ivelfare 
is entirely distinct from and quite independent of, his 
physical well-being; for those who so think, the inner 
life is a thing wholly apart from the outer physical ex- 
istence; and while care for the latter may in some cases 
do no harm to the former, and while the lover of men's 
souls may interest himself also in the well-being of their 
bodies, yet such interest and the corresponding activity 
is aside from the true purpose of life. 

I am not blind to the fact that this point of view, or 
at least a nominal acceptance of and partial belief in 



34 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

this theory, has given us many noble and beautiful 

lives, has given us most of those elder brothers 

of mankind to whom we look back with 

The recognition reverence and thankfulness: nor do I 

of the unity of 

Hfe, of the in- fa.il to see that the other point of view 

terdependence r 

of psychic and has been that of many coarse and selfish 

physical pheno- " 

mena, opens the egotists, and that it sometimes appears 

mind and heart ° rsr 

to every infiu- as the parent of, or at least as the 

ence, and by * 

leading us to sponsor for, that mad quest for immediate 

realize that the . . 

present alone is enjoyment which destroys the lives ot 

ours, does the J . , , , Z , 

utmost for the thousands oi the youth ol every advanced 

development of .... , _ . 

the future. civilization. And yet I am convinced, 
not only that the latter is the truer, 
that it is the true point of view, but also that 
it is the one that has the most promise for the moral 
and spiritual welfare of mankind; because while the 
belief that spirit and body are fundamentally distinct 
and separate and that our proper concern is with 
the former alone, has the tendency to justify us in 
confining our attention to but a part of that which is, 
to but a, fraction of reality, and in moments of spiritual 
stress is likely to cause us to turn our backs to science 
and to art, and while from this point of view the life of 
the Indian fakir, who spends his days in motionless 
trance, and that of the filthy mediaeval monk, who 
spent the years in prayer and self-castigation, are logical 
and proper; the other point of view, on the contrary, — 
the point of view that life is one, that spirit and body 
are the inner and outer sides of the one being, whose 
welfare is dependent upon their joint development, — 
this point of view, intelligently held, requires not only 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 35 

that we shall recognize that the present alone is fully 
ours, but that we shall consider all that is, that mind 
and heart be thrown open to every influence; it is based 
upon the assumption that nothing is too mean to com- 
mand the reverent attention of man, that nothing is so 
insignificant that it will not help man to understand 
himself, — the topmost flower upon the tree of life, the 
heir of the ages, — and so contribute to the enrichment 
and perfection of life. 

Only by this study of all with which life brings us 

into relation, of the whole Universe of which man finds 

himself to be a part, can man learn to live 

a true ideal aright. The true ethical ideal, which shall 

must be based . , , . , . . 

upon the whole supplement the instincts man has inherited 

of human ex- „ , . , j i 1 

perience. from his human and subhuman ancestors, 

shall check and complement them; which 
shall enable this being that has attained to reason to 
lead a truly rational life, studying the impulses which 
stir him and from this study learning to live an ordered 
life, to which the balancing of one impulse over against 
another shall give consistency and symmetry and poise, 
instead of an aimless life of blind instinct, now directed 
by one, the next moment by another impulse, — this 
true ethical ideal can be no other than a working hypothe- 
sis as to the right conduct of life, attained as a residt of 
the consideration of all the facts that enter into life. 

That all ideals are necessarily based upon the real, 
is a fundamental truth that is generally ignored. Let 
us remember, not only that an ideal not based Upon the 
real would be worthless, but that it could not exist. 
We are too prone to talk as though ideals were self- 



36 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

existent entities, independent of all human experience; 

as though all that we regard as high ideals had been set 

in the sky at the beginning of time for man 

aii ideals are to look up toand strive after. But if we 

based upon r 

reality. leave the realm of poetry and consider 

But the false seriously what we mean by an ideal, we 

ideals handed ^ J 

down to us by s hall find that all ideals are based upon 

tradition are 

based upon the reality and owe their existence to human 

imperfect ap- . 

prehensions of experience. Many of the ideals that have 

reality that ob- . 

tained in more been, and that still are, held up before 

primitive stages . 

of civilization, man, have, it is true, very little apparent 
kinship with reality; they are often fan- 
tastic and absurd, equally impossible of attainment 
and undesirable if attained; but this is so, not because 
they arose independently of reality, but because they 
were based upon an imperfect apprehension of some 
partial phase of reality, and not upon a comprehensive 
study of the whole of reality. What is an ideal? It is 
— is it not? — an idea of something worthy of one's 
attainment. Like all other ideas, it must arise, as a part 
of hmnan experience, from the reaction of the human 
mind to the reality with which it is confronted, which 
forms the content of its consciousness. The savage 
acquires his ideals as a result of cruder thinking than 
ours, it may be, but in the same general way that the 
highly civilized man in the twentieth century acquires 
his; and the savage is often as ready to suffer to the last 
extremity for the sake of his (in our opinion) false ideals, 
as we are for our more elevated ones. But neither the 
intensity of his conviction nor the completeness of his 
self-immolating devotion gives the sanction of divine 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 37 

truth to the savage's ideals — nor to ours. Not a few of 
the ideas and ideals that still exercise a considerable 
influence among civilized peoples, are based upon the 
narrow experiences and imperfect apprehensions of 
reality that characterize a rudimentary stage of civili- 
zation, and were gradually given a definite formulation 
by the intellectual leaders of a still very imperfectly 
civilized people. In .all such cases the ideal, itself 
formulated in an early day, corresponds to a conception 
of life that arose still earlier; and yet it often happens 
that the ideal thus formed and thus formulated is 
insisted upon as that to which man's conduct in the 
quite different world of a later stage of civilization, 
with its broader horizons and deeper insights, must 
conform. 

Why is it, let us now ask ourselves, that, throughout 
the course of human history, the ideals of ignorant and 
child-minded ancestors have controlled the 
Reasons for conduct or the thought of their much more 
to^false^adi- mature and better informed descendants; 
tionai ideals. or at j eagt have const it u ted the creed M/hich 
the latter have felt under moral obligation 
to confess, even though in their actual conduct they 
might run counter to it and might often be compelled 
to do so by the circumstances of the times in which 
they lived, and even though deep in the recesses of 
their souls they might not feel it to be true? Partly, 
of course, because of the power of custom, of habit, of 
tradition; because of the natural (and proper) disposi- 
tion to believe what one is told, especially by his parents 
and elders and by those whose lives are, or are sup- 



38 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

posed to be, given to the study and teaching of moral 
and religious truth. And we are the more completely 
subject to these traditional ideals when we have no 
satisfactory and complete substitute for them; when 
we have not ourselves had the leisure, the inclination 
or the ability to think out for ourselves a theory of 
conduct that, while avoiding the defects of the tradi- 
tional one, should have all its real or supposed advan- 
tages. Further than this, our deference to a traditional 
ideal is greatly strengthened by the consideration that 
it has taken form through the activity of the best and 
ablest men of that elder day in which it was first formu- 
lated, and that it has been acknowledged by, and in 
some measure at least has actually controlled the lives 
of, the great majority of the best men of succeeding 
times. And finally, it is generally true that while 
most of those we honor as men who have tried to do 
right and to serve their fellows, and who in some mea- 
sure have succeeded therein, have professed allegiance 
to the old ethical ideals, a great number of those who 
have denied its validity have lived badly, — their lives 
deserving disapproval not alone from the standpoint 
of the old ethical ideal in question, but also from the 
standpoint of regard for their own health and wellbeing 
and for the wellbeing of others, — indeed, it might often 
be said, from the standpoint of science, humanity and 
common sense. 

Here is the strength of all the old ideals, — that, 
whether or not they be conducive to true progress and 
adapted to the conditions of life of those among whom 
they prevail, at any rate, true or false, they are ideals! 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 39 

For however much the world may outwardly make 
sport of ideals and idealists, and although it justly 
contemns the man of one idea, and deeply deplores 
fanaticism, yet at heart all mankind, and perhaps 
most of all the practical man of the world, respects the 
man who by his conduct shows that he has an ideal, — 
in other words, the man whose life follows some plan, 
or at least has some guiding principle, and thus shows 
that he is on the human plane, capable of perceiving 
that which is not immediately present to any one of the 
five senses, and of working for distant or non-material 
ends. 

Bearing all this in mind, we shall perhaps be able to 
understand the form that the standing quarrel be- 
tween the conservative idealist and the 

Blind deference revolutionary realist so often and so un- 
to tradition and . 

moral nihilism iortunately takes, lne latter despises 
factory. the former as a self-deluded fantast, lack- 

ing in intelligence or in honesty and frank- 
ness, or in both; while the former shudders at the latter 
as a conscienceless sensualist, devoid of appreciation of 
all that is noblest in human life. And far too often 
both in their adverse judgments are in a measure right; 
for neither has a philosophy of life arising out of his 
own thought and feeling and based upon a study of 
himself and the world. The former is the slave of 
habit and tradition, shouts the old shibboleths because 
the majority of the respectable world does so, and for 
the same reason acts inconsistently therewith in a 
hundred particulars with perfect serenity; while the 
latter's thought is mostly negative and destructive, or 



40 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

at best critical, not constructive. Although the lat- 
ter professes to believe that nothing exists without 
an adequate cause, he makes no serious effort to 
understand the ground of his opponent's error, but 
contents himself with ridiculing his absurdities and 
denouncing his inconsistencies. The patent incon- 
sistency of many of the traditional ideals with one 
another, with the actual conditions of life, and with 
healthy human instincts, has induced a revolt, and 
the rebel has simply thrown the old ideals overboard, 
instead of attempting to reconstruct them, and has 
determined to lead a free life — which too often means 
that he proposes to sail without chart or compass, 
abandoning himself to every impulse (instinctive or 
reasoned, as the case may be) as it arises, regardless 
for the time being of all else in life. He is as much 
a slave — to his passions — as his opponent is a slave — to 
tradition and habit. The life of the latter is at least 
brooded over, if not actually controlled, by a vague 
sense of duty arising from the current traditional con- 
ceptions of God, of immortality, and of the freedom 
of the human will, and is further conditioned by the 
acceptance, in name or in fact, of a body of specific 
beliefs and rules of action, — more or less consistent 
with one another and with human experience, but 
coming to him in the main from without, not springing 
out of his own thought and feeling as his own interpre- 
tation of life. He is in a large measure the slave of the 
past, a subject not a citizen of the moral world. But 
the disciple of the gospel of revolt of whom we have 
just been speaking, is just as little a citizen of the 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 41 

moral world; his attitude is rather that of the anarch- 
istic nihilist, who, dissatisfied with the moral govern- 
ment of life as he finds it, proposes, not to substitute 
a better for it, but to dispense with all moral order. 

Neither of the adversaries has attained to or even 
sought for, a true philosophy of life, — which must be 
The life en- based upon a recognition of all that is, and 
tmephiiosophy in accordance with which the conduct of 
mora b i e an d th life will be controlled by the relations 
beautiful. tnat are f ound tQ su b s i s t between the 

individual self and all else in the universe (every part 
of which is related, directly or indirectly, to every 
other part). A life thus enlightened by philosophy 
will neither be that of a pilgrim sojourning for a brief 
period in a vale of tribulation, nor that of an adven- 
turer wielding a free lance in a world of hazard out of 
which he is trying to carve his fortune; it will be the 
earnest, loving, moral life of the joint heir of the ages, 
seeking to make the home that he and his brothers 
have inherited as beautiful, and the life in that home 
as noble, as may be possible. 

A great practical evil of the doctrine that man's life 

here and now (of which he has certain knowledge) is 

but a prelude to a future existence (as to 

"Other-world- ^ _ v 

liness" leads us which he has no certain knowledge, it 

to neglect that . ... 

which is, in the being merely a matter of belief), is that it 

interest of that & J ■"' 

which is ima- leads us to look upon actual human lite 

gmed, treating x ,..-,, 

human lives as as a means, not as an end in itself, — thus 

a mere means ... T _ • i 1 i i 

to some ulterior violating what Kant rightly declared to be 

a fundamental ethical principle.* Instead 

*Kant's insistence upon this point seems to me to go far to make 
atonement for the injury his philosophy has done to the cause of truth. 



42 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

of living, largely and truly, men are content to make 
of all of life of which they have certain knowledge, a 
mere preparation for a future state of existence. This 
tendency shows itself not alone in the life of the fakir 
of the East and the nun of the West and in the narrow 
and often sour life of the Anglo-Saxon non-conformist 
of the last three centuries; the influence of this attitude 
toward life is carried over into purely secular affairs, 
showing itself in the protest of the conservative against 
any broadening of the lives of the lower classes, whose 
duty it is, we are piously assured, to be content in that 
position in which it has pleased Providence to place them 
(that is their road to Heaven; and if they get there, what 
does it matter whether the short stretch of road leading 
thereto be rough and stony, dark and i arrow, or broad, 
bright with sunshine and carpeted with flowers!) In- 
deed this seems to be the fundamental error of the 
great-hearted Jesus, who by his gospel of love has done 
so much to bring sweetness and light into the life of 
mankirid, but who in such utterances as "Blessed are 
the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven," "It 
is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle 
than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven," 
and other more or less similar expressions, including 
perhaps that which the Johannine Gospel attributes 
to him, "He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that 
hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life 

The spokesman of a transition period in human thought, his masterly 
expression of that which was felt to be the need of the hour, — the 
acceptance of the verdict of reason without the abandonment of what 
was regarded as the indispensable foundation of morality, — not only 
satisfied the immediate desire for a presentable theory of thought and 
life, but discouraged progress in philosophy by leading men to rest 
content with paradox. 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 43 

eternal," seems to perpetuate the Buddhist error that 
self-abnegation has a value in and of itself, apart from 
any service to others that may be wrought there- 
through, and to unduly minimize the dignity and 
importance of the present life in comparison with life 
in a world beyond; thus leading men to believe, not 
merely that a narrow and miserable earthly life is a 
matter of spiritual indifference, but that such a life is 
indeed to be preferred, inasmuch as the best places in 
Heaven are to be reserved for those who lead a miser- 
able life on earth. But not only has this religious 
doctrine been consciously carried over and made a 
social and political weapon in the hands of the con- 
servative; it has unconsciously, as it were, entered 
into the social, political, industrial and scientific life 
of mankind, exercising a great influence upon the 
actual organization of society at large and of scientific 
and educational undertakings, and conditioning the 
thought of many social theorists. It is largely respon- 
sible for that widely prevalent ideal which I may call 
the ant-ideal of society. A child — the most beautiful 
and perfect blossom of the tree of life, springing from 
its topmost twigs — is born into the world; but instead 
of being allowed to develop freely and naturally, as 
would be the case with such a blossom upon a tree 
growing wild, when it would be followed by the fruit 
in due season, the stock upon which it grows has been 
committed to the care of the orchardist, whose every 
effort is to force the fruit, though it be at the expense 
of the flower. To change our metaphor slightly, I 
would compare man (not to the flower alone, but) to 



44 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

the whole plant, and would insist that this human 
plant should be treated as an end in itself, not as a 
mere means for the production of fruit, as with the 
orchard peach tree, nor merely as a means for the 
production of flowers, as in the case of the garden rose 
bush. In a German rose garden one finds two sticks 
from two or three to six or eight feet high, the thicker 
one being the artificial support and the thinner one the 
living rose stalk which is fastened to it. At the top of 
this bare stem is a clump of leaves and large, beautiful 
and fragrant roses. In an English orchard you may 
see a stumpy, stocky, close-trimmed something, once 
destined by Nature to be a tree but now trained against 
a sunny brick wall; and if you visit it at the right sea- 
son of the year, you may pluck from this deformed 
tree a basket of luscious peaches. I am not question- 
ing the propriety of the gardener's activity, and I am 
far from disputing that he has been successful in pro- 
ducing large and beautiful flowers by thus controlling 
the growth of the plant and subordinating every other 
function, including the production of fruit, to this one 
end; nor do I doubt that by torturing the peach tree 
into the semblance of a vine, by removing many of the 
blossoms and subordinating everything else in the life 
of the tree to his one purpose, the orchardist succeeds 
in producing large, fine, sweet fruit; and I am grateful 
for both the beautiful roses and the luscious peaches, 
the superiority of which to the bitter almond from 
which the peach is believed to have been developed is 
beyond question. And yet, as I observe the grace and 
beauty of an unpruned tree, and follow its natural 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 45 

development throughout the year, now a great pink- 
brown plume, with swelling buds and tender shoots; 
later its wide-spreading, graceful boughs adorned with 
delicate and fragrant blossoms, relieved perhaps by 
the soft yellow-green of the young leaves; in midsum- 
mer a mass of richest verdure, in the midst of which 
the nut clusters or the ripening fruits have begun to 
show themselves; and still later the foliage, which had 
become dark, turning light again, as it were in the 
second childhood of advanced age; and then at last 
the gorgeous twilight of the tree's annual life, the 
variegated beauty of the green and bronze and red and 
yellow of the dying leaves, — as I see all this and much 
more than I can describe of grace and beauty and rich- 
ness and variety of life in the natural, spontaneous 
development of a living thing, I can not think it best 
that man's life should either be so cultivated as to sub- 
ordinate everything else to the flower, as is the spend- 
thrift pleasure-seeker's, or, on the other hand, should 
be pruned and deformed in the present, to force the 
fruit of the future, as is the life of the religious devotee 
and, hardly less so, the life of the industrial or scientific 
specialist, who, being "born a man, dies a grocer" or 
it may be a mine laborer, a chemist or a philologist. 

When shall we understand that the learned and dis- 
tinguished professor of philosophy who at sixty years 
of age observed for the first time the astonishing 
fact that there was a generic difference in the shapes 
of leaves, and that those of the oak and of the chest- 
nut were not alike,* is an uneducated man, whose 

*A fact. 



46 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

culture is pitifully deficient. And such a case is by 
no means unique, although at first glance it may 
The lives of appear to be so. What of the gifted 
educated andof botanist who has not yet decided whether 
Mjrowan'd lop- the current religious ideas of his generation 
as d thos a e S oT U were miraculously revealed to a certain 
andpwerty- P art of the human race some centuries 
stricken. R g Q or were " invented by an ambitious 

priesthood," but who takes for granted that the truth 
is to be found in one or the other of these two crude 
hypotheses? What of the musical genius who has a 
vague idea that waving palms grow at the top of the 
Andes? What of the learned scholar whose historical 
investigations have made him famous throughout the 
civilized world, but who believes that all the activity 
of sub-human beings, from the lowest to the highest, 
is directed by a mysterious something characteristic of 
animals and denominated Instinct, while for the guid- 
ance of man in sublunary affairs there exists a some- 
thing entirely distinct from and wholly unrelated to 
instinct, which is denominated Reason, and for the 
direction of man's spiritual life there is a third, and 
again an utterly distinct and unrelated something, 
yclept Intuition? What of the profound student of 
social institutions who cannot drive a nail without 
smashing his finger? What of the great physicist who 
has a notion that several hundred or thousand years 
ago there was an absolute monarchy at Rome which, 
as the result of an unusual degree of oppression by the 
reigning king, was suddenly displaced by a government 
"of the people, for the people and by the people," 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 47 

similar to that which prevails in the United States 
today, which republican government had a long and 
prosperous existence until an ambitious citizen named 
Julius Caesar took advantage of a frontier war, in 
which he commanded the army of the republic, to win 
the favor of his soldiers and then with their assistance 
overthrow the loyal adherents of liberty, equality and 
fraternity, whose leader was named Brutus, and sub- 
stitute a second absolute monarchy for the republic, 
whereupon Rome became an empire (because the 
people had a traditional prejudice against the name 
kingdom) and so continued until the pope converted 
to Christianity the last Emperor, who then resigned 
his throne to the Vicar of God upon earth? What of 
the rich, accomplished nobleman, courteous and dig- 
nified, who eats and drinks, gambles, dances, makes 
love, fights and patronizes art from one year's end to 
the other, but who has no interest in economic indus- 
try, in science or in philosophy? What of the painter 
who does not know whether the land in which he ex- 
hibits his artistic ability is a despotism or a constitu- 
tional state? What of the business man who is never 
at ease out of his office and who cannot understand 
how grown men can waste their time in out-of-door 
recreations; or of the scholar who spends his whole life 
in his study? When shall we understand that all of 
these alike are half-educated, uncultured fractions of 
men, who, instead of realizing their glorious human 
birthright, have become mere cogs in a social machine! 
The cases I have just given are typical of the dis- 
torted, unsymmetrical, fractional lives that our brethren 



48 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

in all ranks of society are leading today. It is pitiful, 
it is almost maddening to see the heir of the ages thus 
ignore his birthright, and live a stranger in his own 
home, deriving little or no enjoyment from the untold 
wealth that nature, science and art lay at his feet; a 
pauper in a palace; too poor in spirit to open his eyes 
to the beauty that lies all about him, or to enjoy the 
actual mastery of the resources of life that belong to 
him as a man! 

There are a number of reasons for this unfortunate 
state of affairs, one being the notion that it is necessary 
Supposed justi- to the constitution of civilized society that 
fhese°crlmped men should be fitted for the performance 
huma^lrvestn of different functions,— head-workers and 
of e a ne compiex S hand-workers, students of literature, of 
civilization. biology, of astronomy, of history, of paint- 
ing, of economics, of brick-making, of psychology, 
etc., — and that, division of labor being the condition 
of progress, the more complete the division the better, 
and therefore a head-worker should not be expected to 
have the ability to use his hands, nor a handworker to 
have the capacity to reason on abstract questions; for 
art is long and time is fleeting, and "the shoemaker 
should stick to his last. " Even if we did not know it to 
be the Divine Will that some men should in this life be 
hewers of wood and drawers of water, while others should 
be similarly confined to their possibly more elevated but 
still limited functions, we are told, the requirements of 
civilization, the law of progress, the survival of the 
fittest make imperative narrow specialization. No 
man today, it is said, can hope to know all that has 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 49 

been discovered in the different departments of art 
and science or to take part in all the different kinds of 
human activity; human civilization is much too far 
advanced for that and the present accumulations of 
human science immeasurably too vast. On the con- 
trary it is only by means of the greatest diligence that 
one can hope to gain even a practical working mastery 
of that one little department of science or art in which 
he is to do his work. So, a' God's name, select your 
line of endeavor and get to work in it as quickly as 
possible, and, once having selected your specialty, 
stick to it! It is specialization, or in other words the 
division of labor, that distinguishes civilization from 
savagery; only for the lower stages of civilization is it 
possible for every normal individual to do and know all 
that the race does and knows. If you wish retrogression 
to take the place of progress, then by all means let 
every man try to know everything for himself and do 
everything for himself. Let us have feeble amateurism 
instead of the mighty strides of science, dilettanteism 
in the place of art; first a stationary instead of a progres- 
sive civilization, then retrogression, and finally the 
silly enthusiast's ideal — a return to the state of nature, 
i. e. savagery! 

Now, that there is an abundance of truth in what 
has just been set forth, no thoughtful and candid man 
will deny; and yet in so far as the attempt is therein 
made to invalidate the contention that men do not 
live broadly and largely enough, do not in their lives 
take sufficient account of all that is, do not see to it 
that their lives are as broadly human as they should 



50 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

be, it is misleading and fallacious. Carrying the pur- 
port of the implied argument to its logical conclusion, 

specialization should be pushed farther and 
justification farther, until different parts of the com- 
IfSmauln^ad munity should be bred for certain "points " 
by"the"fa c r d alone, so that we might have a veritable 
JuitV^bie 6 human ant-heap— the ideal of industry and 
SS a tS d of the division of labor ! But, unfortunate- 
dfi^tsif o?ay b 7 > with the ants and termites the division 
ofsodoingS of labor is carried so far that individual 
realized. integrity and completeness of life is entirely 

sacrificed. To say nothing of the slaves of 
these insect communities, the great majority of the 
true-born members themselves have become so physical- 
ly specialized that they have ceased to be complete, 
normal animals, and have become mere workers, they 
have lost sexual capacity and can only be nurses, not 
mothers. Let us beware of setting such an ideal before 
ourselves. If my conception of humanity is true, we 
cannot but regard as evil specialization that is carried 
so far as to regard the individual man as a mere means, 
ceasing to regard him as an end in himself. Because 
we should not expect an historian to make with his 
own hands a modern locomotive, it does not follow 
that he should be so manually awkward and physically 
undeveloped that he could not sharpen a pencil or 
drive a nail without cutting his finger or bruising his 
thumb, and could not carry a hod of coal up one flight 
of steps without fainting from exhaustion. Because it 
is unreasonable to expect a machinist to classify, and 
describe the life-history of, any microscopic organism 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 51 

that may happen to be shown him, it does not follow- 
that he should be so ignorant of biology as to believe 
that the only methods of reproduction are those with 
which he is familar in the case of the chick and the 
kitten. As a life-long student of education, I assert 
that it is entirely possible for a normal youth of, say, 
nineteen to have had such a physical training and 
mental equipment as shall give him a fair understanding 
of himself and of the general nature of the world of 
which he is a part, in its physical, chemical, biological 
and psychic aspects; fit him to live a large, human life 
in that world; and make it impossible that he should 
ever become a mere machine for the production of 
some specialty, however earnestly he may devote 
himself to his particular vocation: and indeed some- 
thing approaching this can be accomplished for the lad 
of fourteen. I am no enemy of the division of labor, 
but I do plead for a broad and human foundation for 
specialization; and I venture the assertion that the 
historian who has some knowledge of biology will be a 
far more intelligent, and hence a more useful, historical 
specialist, than his brother historian who could not 
spare a few hours out of his life to learn anything that 
had not a direct and obvious bearing upon his specialty. 
I grant that the broadly educated and physically 
developed student of history, who has retained a 
healthy craving for fresh air and exercise, who has 
some insight into the processes of nature that are 
going on in the world about him and into the principles 
of physics in accordance with which the wonderful 
machines that do man's work have been constructed, 



52 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

who takes not an historical interest alone but a truly 
aesthetic enjoyment in the world's great works of art, 
and to whom history is not an end in itself, a finality, 
but a means of assisting men to understand the present 
constitution of society, and thus a help to him in his 
endeavor to improve the condition of mankind in the 
present and the future — I grant that such a man will 
not be so likely to give ten hours a day to his specialty, 
as the historian who knows nothing but the records of 
the past and cares for nothing else; but I believe that 
five hours of historical work each day from the former 
will be worth more to the world than the 
The more com- ten hours of the latter; I know that the 
physicaTa^d 5 former's life will be worth more to himself 

KSS™£" than the latter ' s ' wiU be a lar g er > tmer > 

work a'sa h spec- more human and happier life, and, being 
iaiist will be. t j 1 j Sj j a m convinced that it will bless the 
world more. For what, after all, is the 
benefit of civilization if it is not to enable men and 
women to live larger, sweeter, happier lives? What 
is the advantage of progress, what the good of science 
and of art, if no one is to take time to enjoy them? I 
am reminded of the story of the prosperous Illinois 
farmer who worked very hard so that he might be able 
to add a neighboring strip of land to his already large 
farm. Although every one may know the story, it will 
do no harm to repeat it until everyone has seriously 
considered the moral. Asked why he wanted the 
additional land, he answered that he would thereby 
be enabled to raise more corn; and when the benefit 
to come from this was inquired into, he stated that 



PHILOSOPHY AND EVERYDAY LIFE 53 

he could then fatten more hogs. "And what good will 
that do you?" "With the proceeds of the sale of the 
hogs," he replied, "I can buy more land." "And 
then?" — Why then of course I can raise more corn and 
fatten more hogs and buy more land!" 

But what has this to do with the antithesis between 
the view that regards life on earth as a mere preliminary 

to eternal existence, and that which looks 
alleged fuitifi- upon our earthly existence, here and now, 
nlrrow Umita! as the great fact of life, the only existence 
iiyes, L h sThe n of which we, as individuals, have certain 
£rtwy e £fa- knowledge? Just this: that back of the 
fostered h by is justification set forth in the preceding 
ness e ''" worldli " paragraph for the philosophy of life that 

finds it proper to disregard man's natural 
craving for largeness and completeness of life, and to 
make the individual man a mere cog in a social ma- 
chine, and back of all other possible justifications for 
such a treatment of human life, is the notion that after 
all it does not much matter whether man's earthly 
life be large and full and free or narrow and deformed — 
"I'm but a pilgrim here, Heaven is my home!" With- 
out the support of this idea, the other justifications for 
the confinement and distortion of human life would 
not, I believe, have stood as many hours as they have 
centuries. In this " other- worldliness " lies the root 
of the mischief! Nothing therefore, in my opinion, 
stands more in the way of true human progress — pro- 
gress in sweetness and light, that is, progTess in right 
living, not necessarily progress in the acquisition of 
material goods nor even in the advancement of isolated 



54 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

branches of science — than the failure to estimate life 
here and now at its proper value, — a failure that 
seems to be due to the fact that we have treated the 
hypothesis of immortality as the most significant fact 
of human existence. 

From the practical point of view, then, I maintain 
that philosophy is of the utmost importance, — even 

more important for us all today than what 
mS S e°s P ts itself ™ call science. For "What shall it profit 
sTo^of knowT-" a man though he gain the whole world and 
wlfdo'm l° se his own life?" What good is there in 

adding to our knowledge of the laws of 
nature if we do not thereby get any assistance in living 
larger -and happier (that is, better) lives? What we 
need most of all is, not the accumulation of items of 
information, but that which shall convert our knowl- 
edge into wisdom, and that is — philosophy. 



Ill 

THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION 

THE TRUE INTERPRETATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF 
CAUSE AND EFFECT 

"Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies; — 
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 

Tennyson 

Every normal child is an animated interrogation 
point. Every young vertebrate, to go no lower in the 
scale of life, is full of curiosity. Curiosity is indeed the 
sign manual of intelligence. And yet, although from 
the cradle to the grave we are continually demanding 
and offering explanations, we rarely ask ourselves the 
simple fundamental question, what the true nature of 
an explanation is. Notwithstanding that this question 
is the fundamental one for philosophy, the conception 
which the professed students of philosophy have held 
as to the true function of explanation has often been as 
vague and unintelligent as that of the child or the un- 
educated man or woman; and, worse than this, the 
failure to grasp the true meaning of explanation has 
too often been concealed under a somewhat pretentious 
traditional classification of causes, which has served to 



56 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

keep the layman from recognizing the legitimate limita- 
tions of explanation, and has even tended to prevent 
the student of physical science from clearly formulating 
to himself what a legitimate scientific explanation is. 
The devotee of physical science, however, although he 
may never have formulated the idea, has a pretty 
definite notion of what is meant by the explanation of a 
physical phenomenon; and it is to him that we may 
best look for guidance in the attempt to get a clear idea 
of what is accomplished by an explanation. 

Has anything ever been satisfactorily explained to 
you? "Yes," says one man; "hundreds, thousands of 
things have been explained to me." "No," says 
another, answering in the spirit of Tennyson's apos- 
trophe to the flower in the crannied wall; "I have had 
partial explanations of myriads of things, some more 
and some less complete, but I have never yet received 
a complete explanation of anything. " Comparing these 
two answers, I think we shall see in what sense it is 
true that anything can be explained, and what the 
legitimate function of explanation is. Every one will 
doubtless admit that both answers are true. The latter 
is the exact, philosophical answer; the former is the 
practical one. The child, the practical man of affairs, 
the student of science has learned the explanation of 
hundreds and thousands of things, and has perhaps, in 
turn, explained hundreds of things to others. In what 
have these explanations consisted? Always simply in 
this: in showing the relations of the thing in question: in 
bringing out the relations of the several parts of the 
thing to one another and to the whole, or in showing 



THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION 57 

the connection of this thing with other things. If the 
matter is at all complex and the explanation is at all 
far-reaching, it may embrace both of these processes. 
The explanation of a map or chart or of a state con- 
stitution may consist primarily in the former process, 
bringing out clearly the relations of the parts. The 
explanation of such a natural phenomenon as a fall of 
snow or the Gulf Stream consists primarily in showing 
the relation of the thing as a whole to other facts of 
nature. Yet it should go without saying that a thorough 
understanding of the snow storm or of the Gulf Stream 
requires a full knowledge of all that is included under 
the term snow or Gulf Stream, itself, no less than a 
knowledge of the precedent natural phenomena which, 
as we say, stand in a causal relation to the phenomenon 
under consideration. And, on the other hand, al- 
though the explanation of a state constitution may be 
primarily concerned with a clear exposition of its vari- 
ous parts and their mutual relations, yet the explana- 
tion would be quite meaningless if one had no knowl- 
edge of the relations of government to human well-being 
and social progress; and, in like manner, the exposition 
of the relations of the various parts of a chart to one 
another would constitute no practical enlargement of 
knowledge if the meanings of the symbols therein used 
- — i. e. their relation to the actual phenomena of life and 
nature — were not understood. In other words, then, 
whether the relations to which our attention be called 
be primarily internal relations or external relations, 
every explanation really involves both kinds of rela- 
tions, and the bringing clearly to consciousness the rela*- 



58 RELIGIO DOCTORIS . 

tions of the thing in question is what is meant by explain- 
ing it. 

But the relations of everything are really infinite. 
The whole of human knowledge is a complex unity with 
ragged edges reaching out into the unknown. The 
Universe, so far as we know it at all, we know as an 
infinitely vast whole, every part of which is directly or 
indirectly related to every other. In proportion as we 
grasp these relations, does the world become to us a 
true cosmos, a veritable Universe; in proportion as we 
are ignorant of them, does the world remain for us 
chaotic. Thus there is literal truth in the poetic con- 
ception that Reason — which some of the Greeks and 
some modern philosophers have deified — is the creator 
of the Cosmos, which it forms out of Chaos. But what 
is the bearing of the infinitude of relations for every- 
thing that exists, for every object of consciousness, 
upon the question before us, the scope of explanation? 
Obviously this, that a complete explanation of anything 
is impossible so long as we do not know everything. As 
Tennyson has so beautifully suggested, if we knew all 
that there is to know about the simplest little flower, 
we should have reached the ultimate explanation of all 
that is, the last secret of the universe would be un- 
locked, and we should be divine in knowledge and 
doubtless also in power. If anyone says that he knows 
all that there is to know about anything, he must be 
regarded either as one who has spoken carelessly or as 
a pretentious dunce. Perhaps that which most dis- 
tinguishes the scientific thinker from the unscientific 
layman, is that while the latter is liable to feel that he 



THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION 59 

knows a great many things perfectly, or at any rate 
that somebody knows all that there is to know about a 
certain thing, the true scientist is ever conscious that 
he has but the beginnings of knowledge concerning that 
with which he is best acquainted, and in reference to 
which the world may look to him as master. A com- 
plete explanation of the most ordinary human event 
requires not only a perfect knowledge of the contem- 
porary conditions, the natural environment in which 
the event takes place, but also of the constitution, 
psychic and physical, and therefore of the life and race 
history, of the individual or individuals concerned; and 
either line of investigation takes us back to the ultimate 
facts of existence, to primary physical, chemical and 
biological laws, and requires a complete knowledge of 
the process of evolution. But we need not take such a 
complex matter as an event in human life; a perfect 
knowledge of the simplest natural object conceivable, 
says a quartz pebble lying on a beach, would lead us 
to the fundamental laws of existence, and require such 
a knowledge of the temporal and spacial development of 
nature that we should have the key to the knowledge 
of all that is. So long, then, as men's knowledge is 
finite, a perfect explanation of anything is impossible. 
Although, however, a complete knowledge of any- 
thing has never yet been attained by man, he has attain- 
ed to a practical explanation — an explanation that 
goes far enough to answer his immediate purpose— in 
the case of untold myriads of things. He has an im- 
perfect knowledge of the properties of wood, stone and 
iron, of the ordinary processes of inanimate nature, and 



60 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

of the relations of the heavenly bodies to one another; 
of the physical constitution, emotional nature and in- 
tellectual methods of living beings; of the physical and 
biological development of the globe he inhabits, and of 
the course of human history; of the conventional signi- 
ficance of a large body of gestures, sounds and marks: 
and the more perfect his knowledge the more fully does 
he apprehend the relations of these various kinds of 
knowledge to one another, the more do they tend to 
constitute a unity of knowledge, having for its object a 
universe of being, and not a mere "job lot" of isolated 
items of information. The explanation of any new ob- 
ject of inquiry consists in showing the relations it bears 
to the things, processes or laws with which one has some 
previous familiarity. 

The foregoing discussion may seem to be but the 
unnecessary setting forth of a very "simple thing" in a 
very "solemn way"; but the corollaries of the truth as 
to the function and limitations of explanation seem to 
me to be sufficiently important to justify some prosi- 
ness in emphasizing just what the function and limita- 
tions are. 

One corollary is that the positing of first or final 
causes is not explanation. In so far as any relation 
between the subject of inquiry and anything of which 
we have some previous knowledge is shown, a step is 
taken toward explaining the former, it is partially 
explained. But to refer the matter in question at once 
to an assumed ultimate or first cause, is not to explain 
it, but to avoid an explanation of it. If you desire an 
explanation of some wonderful structure, your desire 



THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION 61 

is certainly not satisfied when you are told that John 
Smith or Thomas Edison or God made it. That tells 
you nothing as to the processes, laws and materials of 
which John or Thomas or God availed himself in form- 
ing it; does not help you to connect it with and incor- 
porate it into such knowledge of the Universe as you 
already have. You know that Smith or Edison did not 
create it by a "Hey, presto!" out of nothing. And if 
you could be induced to believe that God did so create it, 
the one significant effect of this miraculous verbal ex- 
planation would be that, although you might still value 
the thing in question for its function, your interest in it 
as a structure would be almost if not quite extinguished, 
since it would, by the hypothesis, have no relation to 
the laws and processes of nature as to which you had 
gained some knowledge, and hence a close study of it 
would do nothing to complete your previous knowledge 
except by putting along side of it a disconnected fact. 
To name anything as the "cause" of something else, 
then, is not to explain the latter, except in so far as the 
term used to denote the cause may bring to mind such 
phenomena as serve to connect the alleged effect with 
so much of the Universe as is already partly understood. 
This fact suggests the second important corollary of 
the true nature of explanation, to wit: that, accurately, 
scientifically and philosophically speaking, no one fact 
is the cause of any other fact, except in the merely 
verbal sense that the statement of the alleged causal 
fact may really include within itself the effect; as when, 
for instance, one says that the death of a senator from 
Vermont was the cause of a vacancy in Vermont's 



62 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

senatorial representation. In a scientific and philoso- 
phical, as distinguished from a verbal sense, no single 
thing can be regarded as the cause of any phenomenon, 
however simple. If we are accurate, we shall always 
have to do with causes rather than a single cause. 
Everything that contributes to the event in question is 
a part of its cause; the attempt to distinguish between 
the various conditions of an event and its one true 
cause, is a vain one, and eminently unphilosophical, 
notwithstanding the eminence of some of those who 
have maintained it. Philosophically and scientifically 
considered, all the necessary conditions are a part of 
the cause, and the alleged true cause is but one, perhaps 
the most prominent, of these conditions. In popular 
language, however, we speak of a single cause for an 
event, simply because the thing alleged is that part of 
the cause which has practical interest for us. 

It may be well to illustrate the multiplicity of cir- 
cumstances which unite to cause an event, by one or 
two simple illustrations that will at the same time 
show how unsafe a guide in this matter is popular speech, 
which, according to the point of view, may fix upon any 
one of a half dozen different conditions as the cause of 
an event. 

A man is found dead, the cause of his death not being 
at first known. An autopsy is held; and the physicians 
conducting the autopsy are interested to know whether 
the cause of his death was an injury to the heart, the 
lungs, the liver, or some other organ or organs. The 
pious daughter who ordered the autopsy was concerned 
to prove that the loved father had not committed the 



THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION 63 

sin of "self-murder." A preliminary investigation 
brings out the fact that the death was caused by some 
quick-acting poison which was probably not adminis- 
tered by the deceased himself, and circumstances point 
to the probability that he was murdered by a recently 
discharged servant. The toxicologist who examines 
the stomach is not interested to know whether John 
Smith or Peter Brown caused the death of the deceased, 
but whether it was poison A or poison B or poison C. 
Finally we have three different causes alleged. The 
physicians who conducted the autopsy solemnly an- 
nounce that the cause of the death was heart failure. 
The chemist says strychnine was the cause of the death. 
The court declares that the death was caused by William 
Jones, a former valet of the deceased. Only one cause 
is alleged by each of these authorities respectively, and 
yet the different answers are all consistent with one 
another, differing only by reason of the point of view. 
Popular usage justifies us in speaking of that, as the 
cause of an event, which is of primary importance from 
the special point of view of the moment. In the case 
just presented, the answers might be united by saying 
that the deceased's death was caused by the act of 
William Jones in stopping the action of the heart by 
administering a dose of strychnine. But such a state- 
ment does not by any means exhaust all that might be 
said as to the cause of the death. 

Take another case. John appears with a scarred face, 
minus his eyebrows. What caused this? It appears 
that James thought his gun was not loaded, when it 
actually contained a charge of powder, and that he 



64 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

pointed it at John's face and pulled the trigger. A 
half dozen things might be alleged as the cause of the 
scarred face, — James' careless folly, the pulling of the 
trigger by James, the presence of powder in the gun, 
the explosive nature of the powder, the fact that the 
gun was pointed at John, the fact that the muzzle was 
within a foot of John's face, etc. But no one of these 
things alone would have produced the scars on John's 
face; it took all of them together to produce the scarring 
of John's face. And in fact, if we had to account for 
the scarring of John's face to one who knew nothing to 
start with (if such a case were conceivable), there would 
be no end to the facts that we should have to allege as 
contributing causes of the event in question, — the 
power of a human being, such as James, to produce 
motion by an impulse of the will; the delicacy and sus- 
ceptibility of the human skin to the influence of fire, 
etc., etc. All these and numberless other facts were 
necessary to the production of the effect in question, 
were a part of that which caused it, and no one of them 
alone, and no number of them together, could have 
caused the event, while one single element was lacking. 
Among other necessary conditions was a certain brief 
period of time between the pulling of the trigger and 
the impact of the flame and powder upon John's face. 
Had every other condition been fulfilled, had the mouth 
of the gun been within a foot of John's face when the 
trigger was pulled, but had it been possible to remove 
John's face or to interpose a screen before the expira- 
tion of the extremely short length of time necessary 
for the passage of the flame and powder to John's face, 



THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION 65 

the event under discussion, the scarring of John's face, 
would not have taken place. 

There is a point to be observed here which is of more 
importance than it may at first seem. Philosophers 
have disputed as to whether the cause actually precedes 
the effect (as is popularly assumed) or is simultaneous 
with it. Kant— rightly, as it seems to me — maintained 
that cause and effect are simultaneous. Of course a 
part of the cause — the pointing of the gun at John's 
face, for example, or the administration of the poison 
in our other illustration — precedes the effect; but a 
part of the cause is not the cause; everything that 
contributes to the result in question must take place 
before the cause is complete; and when the last requisite 
for the completion of the cause is at hand, we have the 
effect; in other words, the effect does not follow the 
completion of the cause, but is simultaneous with it. 
You cannot cause a lemonade to be produced by any 
amount of lemon, water and sugar, so long as they re- 
main apart. A lemon, a glass of water and a spoonful 
of sugar no more make a lemonade than a box of nails, 
a can of milk and a sack of salt. It is the proper 
combination of the lemon juice, water and sugar that 
makes the lemonade; and tohen this combination takes 
place -not after it has taken place, but just as soon as 
it takes place — you have the lemonade. Let it be re- 
peated then, an effect does not, in strict accuracy, fol- 
low its cause, but is simultaneous with the completion 
of the cause. 

The apprehension of this truth may enable us to go a 
step farther, and assert that, in a strict physical sense, 



66 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

as contradistinguished from an historical sense, the 
completed cause and the effect are identical. This 
may seem too extreme a statement, and perhaps re- 
quires a little further explanation, after which it may 
be enforced by an illustration sho ing that in fact 
popular usage suggests that this is true by sometimes 
naming as cause that which is at other times named as 
the effect, and vice versa. In order to understand and 
realize the justification for the statement that cause 
and effect are actually identical, we must emphasize 
that not only is it true that the completed cause and the 
effect are simultaneous, but that, conversely, nothing 
that is really prior to the effect can properly be con- 
sidered the cause thereof. To revert to our illustration, 
the charging of the gun with powder, the intention on 
James's part to startle John by pointing a gun at him, 
the actual aiming of the gun at John's face, even the 
pulling of the trigger — no one of these things was the 
cause of the scarring of John's face; for either or all of 
these things might have taken place and John's face 
might still be as unscarred as ever. It was not the 
previous pointing of the gun at Johns face, but the fact 
that when the powder and flame issued from the gun 
they came in contact with John's face, together with the 
other necessary conditions, that caused the scarring of 
his face. The effect upon John's face would have been 
the same, whether John had just moved to the point 
at which the gun happened to be pointed, or the gun 
had just been pointed at the spot where John's face 
happened to be. It was the actual concurrence of all 
the conditions necessary to produce the effect that 



THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION 67 

caused it, not the previous circumstances that led to 
the concurrence. The concurrence of all the necessary 
conditions for the production of the effect might have 
been brought about in a different way, — John, for 
instance, being blind and deaf, might have inadvert- 
ently stepped between James and his intended target 
at the very moment the gun was being discharged, — 
and, however brought, about, the concurrence of the 
same conditions would have had — yes, would have been 
— the same effect. The simultaneous concurrence of 
all the necessary conditions produces the event, is its 
cause; but it is also true that this concurrence of the 
contributing elements constitutes the event, i. e. is the 
effect. For in a strictly scientific, physical sense, the 
effect which was caused by the conjunction of the 
conditions referred to above was not the scarred face 
which John now has, but the scarring of Johns face 
which then took place. If the accident took place two 
years ago, the present scarred appearance of John's 
face is the result, not of the accident alone, but of the 
accident plus all that has since taken place in connection 
with John's face; and as a matter of fact the passage of 
two years in which the healing power of nature has had 
time to work will doubtless have brought about a very 
visible improvement in the appearance of the scarred 
face. The same thing might be said if the event took 
place two months or two weeks ago, although in the 
latter cases the change in the appearance of John's 
face would naturally not be so great as it would be if 
two years had elapsed since the act of scarring took 
place. If the accident had taken place only two seconds 



68 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

ago, even though we might be unable to detect any 
difference between the present appearance of John's 
face and its appearance at the moment the event took 
place, yet the same reasoning would hold; it would be 
equally true that the scarred face which John would 
now present would not be wholly the effect of the con- 
junction of circumstances that we designate as the 
accident that scarred John's face, but which we might 
perhaps with increased accuracy designate as the 
accidental scarring of John's face. The scarring of 
Johns face was the event in question, and this term 
designates at once cause and effect. Anything actually 
prior to the event was not the cause; at most it was 
something less than the cause, an element contributing 
to the cause. Anything actually subsequent to the 
event is not the effect; at least it is something more 
than the effect, something doubtless which results from 
the effect but in which there is an addition thereto; it 
is the effect as modified, appreciably or inappreciably, 
by the subsequent passage of time and the events 
that have taken place therein. 

This coalescence or identity of cause and effect, 
from the strictly physical point of view, is indeed in a 
measure recognized in popular speech. Take the use 
of the word "accident" (which from the etymological 
point of view is a better term than "event" to describe 
the coincidence of cause and effect in a given occurrence) 
for illustration. While one newspaper may say, "An 
unfortunate accident occurred yesterday, the unsightly 
scarring of our young townsman John Johnson's face 
by the carelessness of his brother James;" another 



THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION 69 

newspaper account may read, "An accident on Beacon 
street was caused yesterday by the folly that has pro- 
duced so many similar occurrences, the supposition 
that 'the gun was not loaded' ; " and a third journal may 
state that "an accident which took place yesterday on 
Beacon street caused Master John Johnson a serious 
disfigurement." In this third account it will be ob- 
served that the accident is spoken of as the cause; in 
the second account the accident appears as the effect; 
while in the first account the accident is (most properly 
perhaps) regarded as the whole occurrence (i. e. cause 
and effect). As a further illustration of the inter- 
changeability of the conceptions of cause and effect 
(arising from the fact that both terms in strictness 
refer not to different phenomena, but to different 
aspects of the same occurrence, — the term "cause" 
applying to the various elements of the occurrence 
when it is dynamically considered, when considered as 
a becoming; the term "effect" describing the occurrence 
when statically considered, when considered as being), 
it may be asked whether the fire causes the wood to 
burn or the wood causes the fire to burn. The owner 
of a pile of fine fat pine wood, which is piled up in the 
corner of his lot, complains that a fire carelessly kindled 
by the children has caused every stick of his wood to 
be burned up; the man next door complains that the 
kindling wood in the corner of his neighbor's lot was 
the cause of such a destructive fire that his fence was 
burned up, his shed injured, and his dwelling-house 
endangered. A chemist in the course of a lecture on 
oxygen, in which its chief properties are set forth, tells 



70 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

us that the combustion of oxygen is the cause of fire. 
A sanitary engineer, delivering a lecture on house 
ventilation, tells us that fire causes the combustion of 
oxygen, and therefore when there is a fire in the room 
the importance of keeping up the supply of fresh air is 
at a maximum. The fact of course is that "fire" and 
"the combustion of oxygen" are different expressions 
for what is at bottom the same phenomenon. In 
short, it is not only true, as we have previously seen, 
that now one and now another necessary condition is 
regarded as the cause of a given occurrence, — the 
singling out of this, that or the other condition as the 
cause being determined by the point of view or by the 
special purpose in mind, — but, further than this, that 
which from one point of view is regarded as the cause 
may from another point of view be considered as the 
effect, and vice versa. The toxicologist says that strych- 
nine caused a particular death; the court of justice 
declares that a murderer named William Jones caused 
the death in question. The chemist says that the com- 
bustion of oxygen causes fire; the sanitary engineer 
tells us that fire causes the combustion of oxygen. 

In answer to the assertion that nothing which is prior 
to an event can constitute its cause, but that it is the 
actual concurrence of the conditions necessary to the 
event which causes it, and that the event would happen 
whether this concurrence of conditions were brought 
about in one way or another, — there is, I believe, but 
one line of attack, and that I am quite ready to wel- 
come if only it be followed to its legitimate conclusion. 
It may be said that the actual scarring of John's face 



THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION 71 

at ten minutes and thirty seconds past four on the 
ninth of October, 1890, in a room in the second story 
of No. 32 Beacon street, by the explosion from a gun 
pointed at John by James, etc., etc., is a particular 
historical event, and that we have to do with that par- 
ticular event, with the effect that was then and there 
actually produced, and not with any might-have-beens ; 
that one of the concurrent conditions that brought 
about this particular effect was the relative position 
of the mouth of the gun and John's face at the moment 
of the explosion, and that as a matter of fact that 
relative position had been brought about by the fact 
that James had just previously pointed the gun at John, 
and had kept it so pointed until the explosion took 
place; that therefore, while it is true that the effect did 
not take place until the actual concurrence at the given 
moment of time of all the necessary conditions, — the 
relative position of John's face and the mouth of the 
gun, the delicate texture of John's skin, the atmospheric 
medium in which the explosion was possible, the actual 
explosion, the contact of powder and flame with John's 
face, etc., etc., — which concurrence of conditions actual- 
ly constituted the effect, yet, this concurrence having 
as a matter of fact been brought about by the pointing 
of the gun at John's face by James (among other con- 
ditions precedent), and by the previous intention on 
James's part to startle John by so aiming a gun at him, 
etc., the actual particular historical event in question 
would not have occurred, would not have been the 
event that it was (although of course a similar event 
might have been brought about in a different way), 



72 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

had not these particular previous events taken place. 
And since the actual event under discussion would not 
have happened without these previous events, these 
previous events do in fact bear a causal relation to it. 
Hence the intention of James, the pointing of the gun, 
etc., though not proximate causes, yet enter into the 
chain of cause and effect as true, although slightly 
remote, causal elements. 

It would seem then from this discussion, that while 
from what may be designated as the standpoint of 
proximate causation, or actual efficiency, only the con- 
currence of conditions existing at the moment the effect 
comes into existence constitute its cause (for it is these 
as they stand, regardless of how they were brought 
about, out of which the effect is constituted), yet from 
what may be designated as the historical point of view, 
i. e. in so far as the effect in question is an event in 
time, all that actually led to the conditions that do in 
fact constitute the effect in question, stand in a causal 
relation to it. The reason that this latter point of view 
is commonly disregarded (even in scientific discussion) 
for that of proximate or immediate causation, is that it 
leads so far as to be practically unmanageable for 
ordinary purposes. A moment's reflection shows us 
that the chain of causation thus presented is an endless 
chain. To follow it logically is to go back to the be- 
ginning of time, if time have a beginning; and spacially 
it would carry us to the boundaries of the Universe, 
if the Universe had limits. If then we regard the Uni- 
verse as infinite (and if by the Universe we mean the 
totality of existence I do not see how we can possibly 



THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION 73 

regard it as finite; for to suppose something beyond, 
outside of all that is, is a contradiction in terms), we 
are logically led to regard causation as infinite. That 
the chain of causation reaches into infinity from the 
standpoint of time, I have perhaps already sufficiently 
indicated: each event in history happens as it does 
because of the existing conditions, which are them- 
selves the result of previous conditions, and these of 
still earlier ones, and so on ad infinitum. That the 
chain of cause and effect likewise reaches into infinity in 
space may perhaps be suggested by several finite illus- 
trations. If you stick your finger into a globe of slight 
elasticity and of moderate size, you may be actually 
able to perceive by the senses that you have affected 
every part of the body. The perfectly spherical form 
is destroyed, not only by the change in the immediate 
neighborhood of your finger, but by a change through- 
out the substance; you may be able to detect by vision 
alone a slight protuberance at the most distant point 
of the globe, the point antipodal to that at which your 
finger is placed, which protuberance must prevent that 
half of the surface of the globe of which it is the centre 
from having a perfectly hemispherical outline. To 
take another illustration, we have learned that in ac- 
cordance with the law of gravity the apple and you and 
I are attracted to the surface and toward the centre of 
the earth, and that similarly the moon is attracted 
toward the earth, the earth toward the sun, etc. We 
must not, however, forget that this is but half of the 
truth. It is equally true that the earth attracts the 
sun, and the moon the earth, and that even the apple 



74 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

exerts an attractive force, not only upon the body of 
the earth, but upon the sun and upon the most distant 
star in the Universe. It is true that the attractive 
power which a tiny apple exerts upon a star of the first 
magnitude millions of millions of miles distant from it 
may be so immeasurably minute as to be quite negli- 
gable for most scientific, as well as for practical, pur- 
poses. So is the disturbance of the water on the shore 
of the antarctic continent that is caused by dropping 
a pebble into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But 
although the tendency to produce ripples which in the 
form of an ever-expanding ring shall extend to the 
boundaries of the surface of any liquid into which a 
body is dropped, may be counteracted by any one of a 
thousand other disturbances of the liquid, and, in view 
of the smallness of the object dropped into the liquid, 
may be so weak that under the most favorable condi- 
tions possible it would have been imperceptible a few 
feet from the point at which the object was dropped, 
yet if the laws of physics are valid, if the falling of a 
mountain into the calmest inland lake would cause the 
slightest disturbance of its surface an inch beyond that 
part of the water which the falling mass should actually 
strike, we know that, however immeasureably small 
it may be, the gentle dropping of a tiny shell into the 
vastest and stormiest of seas must produce some effect 
throughout the vast ocean, even to the moat distant 
shores. We must not forget that though anything be 
immeasureably small it nevertheless exists, and that 
to counterbalance a force is not to annihilate it. The 
least amount of energy exerted anywhere tends to reach 



THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION 75 

through the Universe; and if I am not made uncomfort- 
able by the disturbance of the surface of the earth pro- 
duced by the crawling over it of an insect at the anti- 
podes, it is not because the impact of its tiny feet upon 
the grain of earth upon which it steps does not produce 
a disturbance which is communicated to the next grain 
and to the circumambient air and so on to all the solids 
and liquids and gases in the Universe, but only because, 
on the one hand, millions of other impulses from other 
sources are crossing the path of that set in motion by 
our insect's footfall, and counteracting it, and, on the 
other hand, my senses are not delicate enough to per- 
ceive the disturbance of the earth produced by my 
tiny fellow being's promenade, even if the impulse 
should come directly to me without obstruction or 
counteraction. As already said, the exertion of energy 
anywhere produces or tends to produce an effect every- 
where; it is as though the Universe were a vast drum- 
head, the whole of which must be affected by the slight- 
est depression of any part, or as though it were a vast 
body of liquid, the dropping of a grain of sand into 
which must produce waves of motion throughout its 
whole extent. In other words, given the indestructibility 
of energy and the continuity of space and time, and you 
have the principle of cause and effect. 

The practical importance of the illustrations I have 
used to bring out this truth will perhaps be found in the 
fact that they point to the erroneousness of the general 
habit of conceiving of causality under the analogy of a 
straight line in which successive points, A, B, C, D, E, 
etc., represent links in the chain of cause and effect, — 



76 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

B being the effect of A and the cause of C, which is 
itself the cause of D, of which E is the effect, etc. I 
would suggest that we should rather accustom our- 
selves to think of causality under the analogy of a 
spherical surface, which, having neither beginning nor 
end, has no absolute centre, but any point upon which 
may be assumed as a centre, — i. e., either as effect, 
since, being connected by continuous lines with every 
other point upon the surface of the sphere, it may be 
regarded as the point toward which they all converge; 
or as cause, inasmuch as, being connected by continuous 
lines with every other point upon the surface of the 
sphere, it may be considered as the centre of radiation 
from which they all converge. This, as we have al- 
ready seen, corresponds to the fact in reference to modi- 
fications of a spherical surface: a disturbance at any 
point of such a surface constituting a centre of radiation 
from which every other point on the surface must re- 
ceive a more or less disturbing impulse; and the con- 
verse of course being equally true, the modification at 
any given point being conceivable as the effect of the 
modification of the whole, since each point is a centre 
of convergence for continuous lines from every other 
point upon the surface. 

I hope that this analogy may help to make clear the 
fundamental truth that (inasmuch as the only reason- 
able hypothesis is, that all that exists constitutes a 
Universe, i. e., a connected whole) no occurrence can 
take place in any region of the Universe without affect- 
ing in some measure everything else that exists in the 
Universe; the obverse of which truth is that no pheno- 



THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION 77 

menon can occur in any part of the Universe except in 
connection with i. e. as a part of, a modification of the 
whole. This means that every occurrence has some 
measure of direct or indirect causal relation to every- 
thing else that is either contemporaneous with or sub- 
sequent to it, and is at the same time in some measure 
an effect of everything else that is either contemporan- 
eous with or prior to it. Everything that exists in the 
present stands in the double relation of a partial cause 
and a partial effect of everything else that now exists, 
while it is an effect of everything that has ever existed 
in the past and a part of the cause of everything that 
will ever take place in the future. It takes everything 
to account for anything; nothing less than the Universal 
Whole may be posited as the true and complete cause of 
the slightest conceivable occurrence. The underlying 
meaning of cause and effect is not that which is indi- 
cated by the term "proximate cause," nor is it that 
which the theologian has in mind when he speaks of a 
"first cause" — it is neither creation nor succession, 
but concomitant variation. To look for causes and to 
trace effects is to investigate responsive, or correspond- 
ing, changes in the great whole of which we ourselves 
and all else that is are parts, — a fact which points 
back to the first truth that I endeavored to bring to 
clear consciousness in this essay, that explanation does 
not consist in naming a creative first cause, but in 
showing the relations of the thing to be explained, 
its relations to other parts of the Universe and the 
relations of its various parts to one another. 



IV 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 



This world's no blot for us, 

Nor blank; it means intensely and means good: 

To find its meaning is my meat and drink. 

Robert Browning 



All the world's thinkers that have ever seriously 
tried to understand the wonderful world of which we 
Evil is are a part, have had to ponder over the 

imperfection. p ro blem of evil; and the thought expended 
upon this subject has not been without result. With 
more or less clearness it is beginning to be perceived 
that evil is not a positive malignant force (as seems 
at one time to have been believed), but that it is merely 
negative, — that evil is but another aspect of imper- 
fection. 

This is a truth so simple that it has gained wide 
acceptance; and yet the relation of this truth to others, 
its many important corollaries, its bearing upon the 
conduct of life, upon the ethical ideas that men 
should set before themselves and the practical ends 
for which they should work, are generally so little con- 
sidered that it may well be worth while to dwell upon 
this truth at some length; and I am the more strongly 
impelled to invite the attention of others to the implica- 
tions contained in this interpretation of evil, because 
78 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 79 

their consideration has done so much to make my own 
life happier and more serene, — going far toward ban- 
ishing hate from my life, widening my sympathies, and 
giving me the patience in the presence of individual 
evils that comes from the recognition of their tempor- 
ary necessity and confidence in their ultimate disap- 
pearance. 

The recognition of evil as incidental to imperfection, 
in the sense of incompleteness, means, for one thing, 

that notwithstanding the potential loveli- 
Man suffers ness ana< actual beauty of the world, life 
h^ 1 imperfect ° f nas so nrnch of ugliness, physical and 
fhe P conditions moral, not because of man's rebellion 
causl'JTdivme against and disobedience to God, as our 
disfavor. religious teachers for the last two or three 

thousand years have taught us, — not be- 
cause of the wrath (just or unjust) of superhuman beings 
against man, as has been taught by religious teachers 
of all races from the earliest times, — but simply because 
of our incomplete development, and especially because 
of our backwardness in bringing the knowledge we have 
to bear upon human conduct. 

I sometimes think that he who could convince his 
fellows of this simple truth would deserve to rank among 

the world's greatest benefactors. We have 

Only when we ° . . 

understand the a number of wise saymgs such as, What s 

source of evil . 

can we do much well begun is halt done, A wrong con- 
fessed is half redressed," etc., more or less 
directly pointing to the truth that when we have looked 
any difficulty fairly in the face we have gone halfwaj r 
toward overcoming it. When the physician has cor- 



80 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

rectly diagnosed his case he is on the right road toward 
effecting a cure, and only then! Until he knows what 
the evil is that he must meet, all his science, all his 
skill, are unavailing, save at the utmost to afford some 
slight alleviation of the patient's sufferings, while the 
disease itself continues its destructive ravages. 

Such temporary alleviation of the world's evil, it 
seems to me, is all that the world's physicians have so 
far effected. I do not mean that the condition of 
human life in the world is no better today than it was 
seons ago. No; just as when physical disease attacks a 
previously healthy human body and is blunderiugly 
treated by patient and physician, the disease may 
run its course without a fatal termination, and the vix 
medicatrix natures — the recuperative power of nature: — 
may ultimately restore the body to a fair degree of 
health, so in the life of humanity at large the vix medi- 
catrix natural, the natural healthful activity of man, 
groping toward the light almost unconsciously but in 
accordance with a healthy instinct, has brought about 
true betterment. But I do mean that obedience to 
the prescriptions of humanity's professed physicians — 
the prophets, the philosophers, the statesmen, the 
teachers of mankind — has done too little toward help- 
ing us to better living. And this is true partly, indeed, 
because we ourselves and our nurses — the priests and 
pastors, the political administrators and pedagogues 
— have not followed the physician's instructions care- 
fully, and have again and again misinterpreted them 
and shifted the emphasis from the essential to the acci- 
dental, but also — and in larger measure, I think — 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 81 

because the physicians themselves have failed to diag- 
nose the disease correctly and have given so imperfect 
expression to such insight as they have had. 

True as has been most of the religious teaching of 

the world when poetically considered and considered 

with reference to the time and place of its 

Th e transfor- utterance, yet the tendency of the priests 

utterances of f a n a cr e s to convert the prophet's poetic 

theworld'sgreat ° . . 

religious and utterance of spiritual truth into literal 

ethical teachers r m 

into literal and dogma, and to give definite expression to 

dogmatic form- ° . . 

uiaries, to be the reverence and aspirations of mankind 

treated as m- x .... 

fallible and by liturgic rules and formulae, which, mi- 

final revela- " ° 

tions; and the perfect and inadequate to start with, must 

neglect of sci- | 

ence— have re- inevitably be quite outgrown by the 

tarded man's \ i i • 

conquest of evil, thought and feelmg ol a later day — this 
tendency has brought it about over and 
over again that, after a generation or two, the teachings 
of the world's great prophets have been transformed 
into a heavy burden upon the hmnan soul, instead of an 
inspiration, a clog upon human progress rather than a 
light upon the path of humanity. 

That this should be so causes no surprise to him who 
has attentively studied human society. A church, a 
priesthood, or whatever be the name for the organiza- 
tion that has especially in charge the religion of a tribe, 
a nation, or a community, is by its very nature funda- 
mentally conservative; it is controlled by tradition. 
It exists to conserve, to hand down the religious teach- 
ing of a previous generation; and however large-hearted 
and large brained individual members of the guild may 
be, the inevitable effect of their vocation upon a body 



82 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

of men whose chief duty in life is to preserve, and mag- 
nify the importance of, the product of the past, is to 
make them unduly conservative, narrow, and incapable 
of comprehending the present and so adapting their 
own lives and the lives of their disciples to it as to get 
its fullest blessing. 

This is by no means true of ecclesiastic organizations 
alone. While the influences may be somewhat stronger 
in the case of religious guilds, the tendency toward 
ossification is one against which all organizations need 
to guard themselves; they tend to become wooden and 
formal, bound hand and foot by tradition, or else, in- 
stead of a means toward an end, to become an end in 
themselves and to exist for their own sake, i. e. for the 
private benefit of the members. The political ma- 
chines, with their meaningless party cries and mercen- 
ary motives, which are so rapidly developed out of 
public spirited movements for the furtherance of seri- 
ous reforms, may be mentioned in illustration of this. 
And anyone who has observed at all closely the tend- 
ency to uniformity hi the mental attitude of members 
of the legal profession, even in the United States where 
the lawyer is both barrister and solicitor, is consulted in 
reference to business undertakings of all soils, is 
brought into contact with men of every class, and is 
thus exposed to various influences and has a very wide 
experience of life — any one who has observed this ten- 
dency on the part of members of the legal guild to do 
their thinking within certain fixed grooves, must 
realize that the fact that it shows itself at all among a 
body of men exposed to such a variety of broadening 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 83 

influences as are the American lawyers, gives striking 
evidence of the strength of the tendency toward non- 
progressive fixity of thought that is exerted by the 
mere fact of membership in a body committed to the 
conservation of any tradition. 

But let us return to the church. If we would esti- 
mate aright the value of the Christian church in the 
„, . . twentieth century, I think we should first 

Christian . 

church of un- frankly recognize that so much of its 

told value for / ° . 

inspiration to doctrme as has to do with miracles has 

noble living but 

weak as a di- little power over our middle and upper 
for the con- classes i. e. over those who have received 
a fairly broad education. Yet, though 
this be granted, it remains true that the moral worth 
of the church to civilized society to-day is inestimably 
great. For it is the one great influence that still 
keeps before us, with our myriad of special interests, 
the truth that, not public applause nor riches nor power 
nor railroad building nor shoemaking nor the uses of 
the ablative case nor painting nor music nor geology 
nor astronomy, but a righteous — i. e. a wholesome, 
manly — life is our chief concern. And where the inex- 
pressibly great and inspiring thought of Jesus himself, 
that love, a love that shall embrace every living being 
with fraternal warmth and shall reach to the Soul of 
All that Is, is the secret of life, — where this is not ob- 
scured by ecclesiastical embroidery, the church will 
continue to be our greatest source of inspiration to 
noble living. 

But mankind wants more than inspiration, it wants 
direction. Men must soon weary of the eternal cry, 



84 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

"Be good, be good!" however earnestly and lovingly 
it may be uttered, if they are not shown hoiv to be good, 
how to express their love for God and man. Your 
heart may be full of love for a drowning man, but if 
you do not know how to swim and have not the presence 
of mind to throw him a life-belt or a rope, your love 
serves him very little. And the church has not taught 
us how to swim. In the matter of directing human 
activity to good purpose the Christian church is not 
adequate to the needs of the day. 

Of all the teachers of antiquity, Socrates perhaps 
came nearest to leading the world to right living, 
through his doctrine of the practical identity of virtue 
and wisdom. But partly because his own ignorance of 
and disregard for physical science led him to take ac- 
count of ethical science alone, to the exclusion of physi- 
cal science, and so to make his teaching in regard to 
wisdom very one-sided and incomplete; partly because 
his imperfect psychology made it impossible for him 
to explain his doctrine to the satisfaction of the hard- 
headed literal objectors, who insisted that a man might 
know what was right and still not do it, and that wis- 
dom and virtue were therefore essentially different; 
and in large part because his early disciples and ad- 
mirers were unprepared for, and incapable of a sym- 
pathetic appreciation of this part of his doctrine, — 
it has come about that the very heart of his teaching, 
that which entitles him to be called a great philosopher, 
has been unappreciated and neglected, and his really 
philosophical utterances have been passed by for his 
poetical ones, with the natural result that the world 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 85 

soon sank back into the dualism and supernaturalism 
from which his wonderfully pregnant thought might 
have aroused it. 

That the evil that exists in the world is merely the 
result, or, let me rather say, the concomitant, of im- 
perfect development, and that the suffer- 
The funda- ing of mankind is due to man's imperfect 

mental import- , . * 

anceof recog- adiustment to his environment, — that is, 

nizing that man . . . 

suffers evil to his failure to conduct his hie m harmony 

solely because . . 

of his imperfect with the general course of nature, which 
the natural failure is largely due to an imperfect 
life. knowledge of the laws of nature, — is not so 

likely to be challenged as untrue as it is 
to be disregarded as a platitude having no practical 
significance. Yet the thought and activity of a life 
that, measured by experience, must be counted a 
fairly long one, has convinced me, not only that the 
foregoing statement is true, but that its recognition 
and appreciation by mankind is of immense practical 
importance. 

First of all, the recognition of the truth is of vast 

importance because of its effect upon our 
of this truth frame of mind. If it were understood and 
with much of accepted as true, I am morally certain that 
evil we suSeT the burdens of life, although in every other 

and would ■ . 1 1 1 1 • 1 

greatly lighten respect unchanged, would not weigh one 

the burden of , , ,, , ., . , 1 , 

the objective halt so heavily upon us as tney do now! 
remain, be-" To those who have devoted no especial 

attention to psychology this may seem an 
extraordinary statement, but by those who have thought- 
fully observed the phenomena of human consciousness, 



86 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

my meaning will, I think, be readily grasped. The justi- 
fication for my contention is, as I have just intimated, to 
be found in the nature of the human mind, 

a. impersonal and is two-fold. In the first place, we are 

evil troubles us • j i • 1 

much less than so constituted that impersonal evil does 

personal evil. . 

not trouble us so much as the mtentional 

b. We readily . , . 

reconcile our- infliction of evil upon us; and m the sec- 

selves to the . .. . 

inevitable. ond place, we readily reconcile ourselves to 
anything (however contrary it may be to 
our previous desires) as to which we are fully convin- 
ced that it was quite unavoidable and that it can- 
not be altered. 

"Man does not live by bread alone." He is a 
being of sentiment, not a mere vegetable; and how- 
ever bright the sun may shine, however balmy the air 
he breathes and wholesome the food he eats, if he has 
lost the companionship of someone he loves, or, having 
the physical companionship, if he has lost confidence 
in, or the confidence of, one who has been and perhaps 
still is dear to him, he may be very miserable. 

Probably not many of us have ever clearly recog- 
nized how heavily upon the lives of earnest, conscien- 
tious, religious-minded men and women 
responsibility ° f nas rested a something which may perhaps 
a 0r burde^ that not inaptly be designated as a feeling of 
s S P kits U by n reas°o U n responsibility for God (!), and how much 
of ^uldtyinTaii °f tne sadness and heaviness of life is due 
occur! o a r n e d ise h fn to this unrecognized burden. 
d£y°ng n th h e e £! That the universe itself and the laws in 
nes S a o°ou?God. accordance with which it must develop 
are the creation of the will of a personal 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 87 

being, capable of love toward, if not also of hatred for, 
his human creatures, — is still generally accepted, with 
more or less distinct consciousness, not alone by pro- 
fessed Christians but also by non-Christian theists. 
And furthermore, whether or not we be willing to 
admit it, there are for most of us, if not for all, moments 
when we cannot quite banish from our minds a sus- 
picion, let me say, that if Smith had been able to create 
conscious beings, and had done so for his own pleasure 
and satisfaction, and had subjected them to such a lot 
as that to which it appears God has subjected some of 
his creatures, we should not look upon Smith's conduct 
with approval. 

Some of those who have faced this consciousness 
have revolted from their traditional faith, and have 
said, either there is no personal creator of the world, or 
else the being that, having a will and affections, has 
formed the world, is not, as asserted, cannot be, at 
once all-loving, all-powerful and all-good. At the 
other extreme stand those w T ho, shrinking in horror 
from this suspicion that that for which they are ex- 
pected to give praise and glory to God would in another 
being seem unrighteous, treat the suspicion as a sug- 
gestion of the Devil, and will trample under foot 
reason, — with which, according to their theory, God 
or the Devil with God's permission has endowed them, 
rather than abate a tittle of their traditional faith. 
More interesting, perhaps, than either of these ex- 
treme classes, is that great intermediate one, which 
feels that, if all is of God, then reason must have been 
given us for guidance, not as a snare and deception; 



88 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

and that we can only worship God truly when we 
worship him with our whole being, cultivating to the 
utmost all the talents he has given us, and living, alike 
with body, mind, and soul, a life that shall do God 
honor. The thought, the hope, the faith which they 
have received as a blessed inheritance from the fathers, 
that underlying all that is are the everlasting arms of 
an all-powerful, all-just and loving Father, who watches 
over the world he has made and doeth all things well, 
— this faith is for this class, in and for itself, over and 
above its traditional claims upon their allegiance, too 
precious to surrender, so long as its possibility is not 
absolutely precluded by reason. 

To the members of this fundamentally religious, 
not bigoted, but truly conservative class of thinking 
and loving men and women, the occasional suspicion 
of which I have spoken is a burden of varying weight. 
Upon the hearts of some, the less elastic and less san- 
guine, it rests heavily most of the time, and its shadow 
is always upon them; for others the ever-abiding, blind 
perhaps, but strong and loving faith in the all-em- 
bracing goodness of God, is a perennial spring of hope- 
fulness and joy which soon banishes the troublesome 
spectre, even though the latter may present itself for 
a moment now and then; while for all, even for those 
whose hopes and desires would never be able to over- 
come the verdict of their reason, there is still always "the 
refuge, that although we may not be able to reconcile 
what we see of the conduct and the government of the 
world to our best ideas of justice and of love, yet "now 
we see darkly," we see but in part, our minds are 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 89 

finite, and only if we saw and understood all that is — 
in other words, if our minds had infinite power — would 
we be in a position to judge; if we understood the uni- 
verse of God more perfectly, that of which we are now 
most inclined to disapprove might seem to us most 
beautiful and good. 

But however it may be met, — and, as I have sug- 
gested, there are various more or less radical and more 
or less satisfactory ways of meeting it, — we must, I 
think, admit that more or less frequently and with 
more or less clearness and impressiveness, according 
to circumstances, this painful thought does come to 
the minds of all religious-minded men and women 
(and we are all more or less religious-minded); and it 
is a burden upon the hearts of all theists to whom it 
comes, whether its effect be to make them wrathful 
and rebellious, or merely to prevent them from feeling 
that absolute confidence in the perfection of God which 
they so greatly desire to feel, or to cause them sorrow 
that they are thereby prevented from justifying satis- 
factorily to their fellow men the ways of God. For, 
however much we may say that God's ways are not 
our ways and that we should not presume to think of 
justifying God, the psychological fact remains that 
every theist does feel the responsibility of trying to 
justify, either to himself or to others or to both, God's 
dealings with men; and he is likely to feel the necessity 
the more intensely, the higher his own life is. 

There is one particular moral evil arising from the 
pressure upon man's life of this burden of responsibility 
for God, which is too serious to be passed over with- 



90 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

out special mention. It is essentially the same evil 
as that which so frequently arises from human hero- 
Thenecessit worship, — so tampering with our ethical 
of justifying standards that they shall not condemn our 

that which one ° 

believes God to hero. When we feel that it is desirable 

have done 

sometimes to justify that of which the undoctored 

makes men in- . . " . ... , . 

teiiectuaiiy conscience of civilized man does not ap- 

dishonest and , . 

untrue to their prove, the temptation to which too many 

own ethical in- . . 

sight and moral of us yield is to stretch the conscience and 

instincts. . . 

revise the ethical standard to fat the case 
in hand; and although this be done with the most 
devout intention and under pressure of a reverent sense 
of religious obligation to find that good which we be- 
lieve our father and creator, our God, has done, yet the 
inevitable result is to obscure our judgment in regard 
to right and wrong and lower our ethical standard, 
even in those human matters in which the agency of 
God is not directly in question. 

The feeling of responsibility for God, then, is one of 
the things that tends to intensify the pain men suffer 
from the evil in the world, and even to increase the 
objective evil. But even did this feeling not exist 
it would still be true that for most men under most 
circumstances (not to make our statement too sweeping) 
the belief that evil which befalls him has been directed 
against him by the free will of some other being or 
beings would make his pain thereunder greater. Even 
supposing that he fully recognizes that the being who 
has inflicted the evil upon him — whether that being be 
God, the magistracy of the state, an earthly parent, 
or some private individual — was perfectly justified 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 91 

in thus punishing him, that feeling will carry with it a 
pang of conscience, a sorrow that he has deserved this 
punishment, which is something additional to the pain 
which the punishment itself, as an objective event, 
inflicts. But in most cases that just presented is not 
the frame of mind of the person who suffers evil. He 
may, if his humility be great, feel that, even though he 
cannot tell why he is so dealt with, he must have com- 
mitted some offence so grave as to deserve this evil as 
a retribution; and so he is made additionally miserable 
by the thought that he has done something, though he 
knows not what, to deserve evil. But often er, general- 
ly, the man who suffers evil which he believes to have 
been willed by some other being, feels that some one is 
treating him harshly; and resentment therefor greatly 
increases the mental disturbance which the evil causes 
him. 

I am not seeking to justify the frame of mind just 
referred to, but merely to present it as a psychological 

fact. We are altogether too much inclined 
our'proneness to look for personal causes at all times, and 
sonaicausation" our discontent at any untoward event is 

greatly increased by the assumption that 
John or Eliza (or, at any rate, God)* is responsible 
therefor; for then we become discontented, not alone 
with the objective evil itself, but also with John or 

*There are, I believe, a few truly religious souls for whom evil is in 
a measure mitigated by the thought that it comes from God, the 
father of goodness and love, and hence must be a blessing in disguise. 
But, unfortunately, there are not many who feel so. This view is 
similar in its results to that (as it seems to me) more scientific view 
which regards the evil in the world as the world's growing pains, so to 



92 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

Eliza or at least with the relation between John or 
Eliza (or God) and ourselves. An attentive observer 
of human nature can hardly have failed to notice that 
if any little thing goes wrong in the house, the shop, 
the playground, the ship of state, or anywhere else, 
the first thought of four persons out of five will be to 
fix the responsibility therefor upon some individual; 
although in fact it may be the veriest chance so far as 
individual human agency is concerned, or may be the 
joint result of the activity of so many that it is highly 
unreasonable to hold any one individual responsible 
for it. It is an unlovely, indeed a very disagreeable 
trait, but it is one very generally found in human nature, 
that thus leads one to find fault with some individual 
whenever anything happens to displease one, and that 
leads us to make a mountain of a molehill if we think 
we can fix the responsibility upon some person, when 
we would pass the event with hardly a moment's 
vexation if there were no possibility of holding any 
person responsible or no possibility of holding any one 
but ourselves responsible. This disposition shows it- 
self in the child, who will set up a lusty roar if he falls 
down when some one is pursuing him or if he bumps 
his head against another child's, when he would take 
very quietly an injury twice as severe for which there 
was no possibility of holding any one but himself 

speak, and as such ultimately beneficent (although not benevolent) 
for the great whole of which we are a part, — just as the obstruction 
to the direct course of a bullet which is made by the rifling of a gun, 
so leads it to the outlet that it finally emerges with a power and 
effectiveness that have been increased by the tortuous path it has 
been compelled to take. 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 93 

responsible. I recall an instance of this in a four-year- 
old who was a great cry-baby when anything befell 
him for which he could contrive to suggest that his 
nurse or someone else was in part responsible; but who 
took without a whimper a very severe bump on the 
head when he fell head-first from a table upon which 
he had been forbidden to climb. This disposition also 
exhibits itself in the serene, matter-of-fact acceptance 
of the mischance when the housewife herself happens 
to let a plate fall, and in the great distress she evinces 
when the maid (carelessly, of course) drops one. 

The reason for this tendency to fix the responsibility 
for every mischance upon some personal agency, is an 
interesting psychological question. I am inclined to 
believe that, while it is today in large measure merely 
a habit, one might say a tradition, among thoughtless 
people, it arose very largely indeed from the general 
tendency among uncivilized men to look for personal 
causes for all events, and that it owes its continuance 
to the common belief that ultimately everything has 
a personal cause, — to wit, God's will. The point of 
view which is almost unconsciously taken seems to be 
about as follows: if I cannot fix the responsibility for 
this evil upon John or Henry or Eliza, — upon some 
individual or individuals other than myself, — then I 
must allow that I am myself, partly at least, responsi- 
ble for it; if not directly, then at least indirectly, in so 
far that it is a judgment upon me for my past sins ; so, 
in order to prevent others from holding me in any way 
responsible, I must hasten to fix the responsibility upon 
some one else. It seems very probable that the Devil 



94 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

owed his influential position in mediaeval society to 
this habit of mind on the part of our ancestors. 

The foregoing discussion has doubtless made clear 
what I mean by stating as a psychological fact that we 
are more pained by untoward events for which we feel 
that some person is responsible than by impersonal 
evil. To represent the truth in one simple little illus- 
tration; if we receive a blow from some object acci- 
dentally falling upon us, our sense of injury is slight, 
our mental distress is measured by the extent of the 
physical discomfort resulting therefrom; but if the 
blow has been deliberately given us by someone, our 
sense of injury, our mental perturbation, is great, and 
may last for days and weeks, even for years, after the 
direct physical effects of the blow have entirely disap- 
peared. 

There remains to be considered, however, another, 
different, albeit kindred, reason why the evil that 
exists in the world would cause us less 
to h re^d?e SS suffering, if instead of regarding it as 
necessityas°af- caused or permitted by an omnipotent, 
is^betiefc" personal God, who could withhold it if he 
would, we recognize it as the necessary 
consequence of the imperfect adaptation of the various 
parts of the Universe to one another, resulting from the 
incomplete state of the evolution of the world-energy 
(which, so far as we have certain knowledge, has only 
developed into consciousness and reason in the lives of 
those higher animals of which man is incomparably 
the highest); and that reason is found in the further 
psychological fact that man is ever ready to reconcile 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 95 

himself to that of the inevitable necessity of which he 
is convinced. Let one be convinced that a thing is 
absolutely inevitable and unchangeable, and his readi- 
ness and ability to reconcile and adapt himself to it is 
surprisingly great. Our students of psychology have 
not given to this interesting phenomenon of human 
consciousness the attention that it deserves, and we do 
not know how far it may go. I am inclined to think 
that the only limitation the principle has is found in 
man's physical endurance; and that however destruc- 
tive of that which had previously contributed to his 
joy and comfort, contrary to his previous desires, and 
subversive of his previous plans and purposes in life, 
anything that befalls one may be, one can nevertheless, 
within the limits of his physical power and endurance, 
and will reconcile himself thereto with unaffected 
serenity of mind, if only he be convinced, first, that it 
was absolutely necessary, could not possibly have been 
avoided, and, secondly, that it cannot possibly be un- 
done. But even if this should prove to be somewhat 
too strong a statement of the psychological fact in 
question, any observant student of human nature must 
soon convince himself that the principle is a very far- 
reaching one indeed. 

It should be noted that while the facility with which 
man reconciles himself to the necessary and inevitable 
might be expected to contribute to the peace of mind 
and happiness of theists no less than of non-theists, 
there are beliefs associated with theism* that stand in 

*It will doubtless be understood that the term theism is used in 
the sense of belief in a personal God. 



96 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

the way. Generally the theist believes in miraculous 
intervention and in the power of prayer to influence 
God to remove evil, and so it is not easy for him to 
recognize that any event is absolutely inevitable; and 
while it is true that the thorough-going predestinarian, 
who has no doubt that what happens to him was in- 
tended from the beginning by God and is irrevocable, 
shows something of the composure of mind that the 
recognition of the inevitable gives, yet his peace of 
mind is disturbed by the thought of the fearfulness of 
God's ways and by a carking, albeit unacknowledged, 
doubt as to whether God's dealings with man are 
really merciful and just, or perhaps it would be better 
to say, by sorrow that God's justice and mercy are not 
recognizably the same as justice and mercy on the part 
of man. 

But supposing that it should be freely admitted that 
the weight of evil would not press so heavily upon us, 

that our hearts would be lighter and the 
Jf h the e S tion world for us would be brighter, if we could 
SurStSom believe that no evil was ever intelligently 
SidSado'n designed, that no part of the evil we find 
and hi Lda y i S en- m life has been planned either by God or 
wouLdTnot' by a Devil or by a brother man consciously 
°hI y e^?s ke from an( ^ intelligently choosing to do wrong 
rJffer Msie? to ra ther than to do right, but that, instead, 
pu"us b onThr ld au tna t affects us as evil arises out of the 
2p h e torn* the 8 " fact tliat we ^ave not V et reac bed that 
themseivel 6 ^ 8 state °* development in which there is 

perfect equilibrium between the individual 
man and the rest of nature, that, in other words, human 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 97 

nature (physical, emotional and mental) is still im- 
perfectly adapted to its environment, that as yet neither 
instinct nor reason nor both together have fitted us 
for a life of perfect harmony with all that is, — supposing 
that we are convinced that life would be happier if this 
were accepted as true, can we accept it, what are the 
reasons for supposing it to be true? And if true, has 
the truth any value for us other than that just discussed; 
in addition to making it easier for us to endure the 
necessary evils of life, and doing away with some of 
their unnecessary incidents, will it afford us any help 
in doing away with the evils themselves? It seems to 
me that to both of these questions we may give an 
affirmative answer. 

That all physical evils with which the agency of 
man has no direct connection, may be stated in terms 

of imperfect harmony between the indi- 
physicai vidual and his environment will doubtless 

be admitted without question. Indeed 
this needs but to be understood to be accepted; it 
may be said to be one of those propositions that 
is true by definition. Such suffering as comes from 
cold in winter, heat in summer, toothache, strangula- 
tion from falling into the water, scarlet fever, etc., are 
evidently results of imperfect adjustment between the 
human system and its actual environment; and as 
humanity progresses it generally suffers less and less 
from these evils. When civilized man lives far from 
the equator he may not be able to change the natural 
climate to suit himself, nor to change his sensitiveness 



98 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

to cold to suit the natural climate; but by means of 

suitable shelter and clothing he produces a sort of 

artificial climate, — a medium, so to speak, 

The so-caiied between raw external nature and raw man. 

"mastery of 

nature" is it- But in all such cases, it is important to 

self, in the last ^ 

analysis, a nat- remember that, however "artificial" the 

ural phenome- 
non; it is no less means of overcoming the evils of nature 

a triumph of • , , , • i 

nature than a may be, they are m the last analysis also 

triumph over " . " 

nature. natural, — man, himself a part of nature, 

overcomes the possibilities for evil in 
nature by means of such a knowledge of nature as en- 
ables him to counteract one natural force by means of 
another; his knowledge of the properties of wood and 
stone and other forms of matter, of furs and fleeces and 
the textile products of plants, of combustion, etc., en- 
ables him to be warm and comfoitable in a cold climate, 
to pass safely over the stormy sea, to provide himself 
with a new set of teeth, to destroy the fever bacilli, etc. 
When, however, we come to moral, to spiritual as 
distinct from physical evil, the truth of our contention 
may not at first seem quite so clear: but a 
eV i}' little reflection will show us that the state- 

ment made above with reference to physi- 
cal evil is no less true here. What is the difference 
between the malefactor and the good citizen, between 
the immoral and the moral man? Is it not what the 
etymology of the last pair of words implies, — that 
the former's conduct of life is not in harmony with 
the mores, or approved customs that govern the 
conduct of the latter and of society at large? 
Human communities have found that certain habits 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 99 

of life are conducive to wellbeing, because they keep 
the individual in harmony with that important part 
of his immediate environment which consists of society 
itself, and, largely through the medium of society, with 
his larger environment of external nature; and the 
representative majority keep in the main to these 
habits of life, while those who are below the normal 
level evidence their imperfect social developement by 
their failure to move in harmony with their fellows 
along these lines of least resistance of which society at 
large has come to avail itself. And in like manner the 
difference between the high and beautiful life of the 
morally superior man and the comparatively petty life 
of the ordinary, passably good citizen, is that, over and 
above the conventional morality which society at large 
recognizes, the deeper insight or more perfect instincts 
of the moral seer, the "beautiful soul," serve to adjust 
his life to a more perfect harmony with the life of the 
universe at large than is possible for those who have not 
gotten beyond the generally accepted, the conventional 
morality of society (which of necessity always repre- 
sents, not the highest wisdom of today, but the wisdom 
of an earlier, less perfectly enlightened day). This, of 
course, means that moral evil, no less than physical, is 
the concomitant of imperfect development, of incom- 
plete adaptation between the individual and the rest 
of the cosmic whole, or, more particularly, of so much 
thereof as constitutes his immediate environment. 

Assuming now the truth of our proposition,— that all 
evil (moral as well as physical) is simply the natural 
expression of imperfection, the necessary result of 



100 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

incomplete adaptation between the individual and the 
universe at large, particularly between the individual 
and that part of the universe which constitutes his 
more immediate environment, — what is the benefit 
to mankind that may be expected from the acceptance 
of this truth, in addition to the benefits already re- 
ferred to, arising from the facts (1) that impersonal 
evil is more tolerable than that which we believe to 
have been intentionally inflicted upon us, and (2) that 
we find it quite easy to reconcile ourselves to anything 
we recognize as absolutely inevitable? 

The great benefit to be derived from a lively realiza- 
tion of the truth of our proposition, is that suggested 
if we recog- above when attention was called to the 
afto evl?, w£ th fact that natural physical evils are over- 
™ch* know- ' come by means of such a knowledge of 
Averse asa nature as enables man to avoid the un- 
SSfe us to uld favorable effects of the operation of some 
weu d as n nS- as one f° rce m external nature by availing 
moral evil. himself of other forces which will counter- 
act it. Evidently, then, the more thorough man's 
knowledge of nature, the more perfectly is he prepared 
to meet every possible physical evil. But we too 
generally fail to recognize that the extension of knowl- 
edge, as it lays a broader and surer foundation for wis- 
dom, contributes also to virtue, — that in proportion as 
we have come to understand our own natures better, 
and our relations to the rest of mankind and to nature 
external to man, in so far have our sympathies been 
widened, our spirits exalted and our moral lives streng- 
thened and beautified. The full recognition of the truth 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 101 

of our proposition then, would, I believe, so enlarge 
and improve our educational ideals and so stimulate 
us in the search for truth throughout the whole realm 
of existence as to ensure results that would soon do 
away with a large part of the moral no less than of the 
physical evil from which the most highly civilized 
races of mankind still suffer. 

The immense improvements in physical comfort that 
have already been effected among civilized men as the 

progress of science has enlarged the bound- 
supernaturaiis- aries of human knowledge are so widely 
t£d" a our m pro- recognized that it is unnecessary to argue 
fuest'of^viMby tne general proposition that the extension 
that el oniy a the ng of science contributes to human wellbeing. 
Sraifand"^?" Wh y is il then that a11 of civilized man- 
nothSga e tXt kind is not eagerly devoting itself to the 
^?rit"fnHn acquisition of knowledge — since the ex- 
naturai science, tension of science is but another name for 

the so-called mastery of nature which en- 
ables man to bring about a more and more perfect 
adaptation between his own life and the course of 
nature external to himself and thus bring happiness to 
himself by the avoidance and conquest of evil? Why? 
Chiefly because of the wide-spread dualistic misinter- 
pretation of life in accordance with which "nature" 
and "spirit" are brought into contrast as though they 
were the designation of hostile realms, and the expres- 
sion "the conquest of nature" is so misunderstood that 
men become blind to the unquestionable fact that 
every "conquest of nature" is at the same time a con- 
quest by nature — that the so-called subjection and 



102 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

mastery of nature consists in nothing else than the 
advancement of human wellbeing by availing one's 
self of such natural forces as may be adapted to the 
purpose of counteracting the possibility of evil which 
might come to man from other natural forces if not 
thus counteracted. But according to the mischievous 
dualistic conception, man has to do with two different 
worlds, the world of spirit, of which he is a citizen, and 
the material world, in which he is temporarily domiciled 
but with which his spirit is or should be at war; the 
latter, the material world, is the world of nature; and 
inasmuch as the natural, or material, world is not only 
utterly distinct from but immeasurably inferior to the 
world of spirit, such an understanding of the universe 
as may come from a study of natural phenomena, 
while it may be good enough in itself, so far as it goes, 
has yet to do with a very insignificant part of the life 
of man. 

Here, in this false antithesis between the natural and 
the spiritual, is the fundamental error which is doing 

■ . . , incalculable mischief to mankind, immeas- 

Psychic and 

social laws of urably retarding human progress and 

nature differ J . ° . , . , T1tT , ., 

from physical distorting our educational ideas. While a 

and chemical 

laws merely growing number oi those whom we regard 

in that the for- , , . . . 

mer are more as educated men are commg to confess the 
therefore more truth in words, only a very few indeed 

difficult to for- .. . • » , , 

muiate and realize the meanmg oi the words, that the 
spiritual is no less natural than the material; 
that nature is all-inclusive, embracing the mental and 
the moral, no less than the physical and material! 
The laws of individual mental and spiritual develop- 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 103 

ment and of social progress are much more complex, 
it is true, and therefore more difficult to grasp, than 
those physical and biological uniformities in nature 
which have been clearly recognized and which we are 
accustomed to designate as laws of nature; but the 
former are just as necessary and just as natural as the 
latter. When men shall recognize this unity of all that 
is, the inter-relation and interdependence of all phe- 
nomena, psychical and material, they will make mighty 
strides in the advancement of human wellbeing (spirit- 
ual no less than material) through the mastery of 
nature; for they will then realize the fundamental im- 
portance of continually collating all knowledge and of 
gaming a conception of nature as a whole; they will see 
that for spiritual progress and moral uplift, as well as 
for mental growth and physical comfort, the inter- 
pretation of the universe in all its aspects, physical and 
psychical, is essential. 

But lest this should sound very vague, and therefore 
almost meaningless so far as the problem of moral evil 
is concerned, let me illustrate what I have in mind by 
specific reference to moral evil; and we may then, 
perhaps, be able to see how a knowledge of nature, — 
— in this case of human nature, and primarily of the 
human mind, — by enabling us to understand the 
source of the evil, would help us to prevent its repeti- 
tion. 

Let us begin by asking ourselves what "moral evil," 
"wrong," is — what makes it wrong? To say, as we 
often do, that it is the violation of conscience that con- 
stitutes the wrongfulness of conduct, does not carry us 



104 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

far; and yet even this answer may help us to get a clear 
mental picture of that which most of us are content to 
leave in the realm of feeling. Let us observe first that 
this criterion of wrong, the violation of conscience, 
makes the matter purely subjective or personal, not 
objective and general. We have but to remember the 
training of the not wholly uncivilized Spartans to see 
that, if this conception be true, theft and secret violence, 
if inflicted upon outsiders or the subject population, 
would seem not to be wrong, since these things the 
conscience of the Spartan lad was trained to approve. 
And indeed the classics of the childhood and youth of 
all civilized races, — of our own Teutonic ancestors 
(whose Paradise consisted in getting drunk every 
night and committing manslaughter all day) no less 
than of the early Greeks and of the Jews of the time of 
the "Judges,"— as well as what we know of savage 
and barbarous races of modern times, show us that 
that of which conscience approves or disapproves 
varies widely with changing circumstances. The savage 
and the half-civilized man often have the most glowing 
sense of self-satisfaction in those very deeds which our 
civilization finds most abhorrent and of which our con- 
sciences most disapprove. We know that there are 
peoples* among whom he who would have the favor of 
Heaven and win the approbation of his own conscience 
must first kill a certain number of his fellow beings — 
it matters little how or under what circumstances, so 
they be not members of his own clan. Yet even though 
the uncivilized man dies happy after committing some 
* "The head-hunters," for instance. 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 105 

deed which seems to us atrociously cruel, in the con- 
sciousness that he has crowned an honorable life with a 
deed that will insure him high rank in the world beyond, 
we cannot convince ourselves that what he has done is 
therefore good, — 'the approval of conscience is not in 
the last analysis a satisfactory criterion of good and 
evil. It is true that we may be generous enough to 
recognize that the individual savage is not to be blamed 
for what impresses us as a veritably devilish deed, since 
he has been bred to think such conduct praiseworthy; 
some of us may even go so far as to say that sub- 
jectively considered the deed was good, that it was right 
for him, although it would be very wrong for us; but 
although it is true that there are men of feeling who 
have become so bewildered that they have given up 
the attempt to define right and wrong, good and evil, 
in other than subjective terms, and have rashly de- 
clared that there is no other criterion than the individual 
conscience, and that therefore it is right — in the moral 
sense good — that the man of undeveloped or badly 
trained conscience should do the thing that commends 
itself to him as good, although it may bring suffering 
to many innocent fellowbeings, — that when each one 
does that which is good in his own sight, all do well, — 
still the saving common sense which prevails with the 
great majority of civilized men rejects this doctrine 
as imperfect and inadequate, if not fundamentally false. 
Generally when we say that that is right which has 
the approval of conscience, we mean that it should 
have the approval of our conscience, and that means, 
in the last analysis, my conscience, i. e. the conscience 



106 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

of the individual who is considering the deed in question. 
It is doubtless true that as regards many things, or at 

least as regards a few matters of fund- 
cZduct'incon- amental importance for practical morality, 
huma^'experi- m y conscience agrees with your conscience, 
i^blneVdaTto* tne consciences of civilized men will give 
being" weU ~ a unanimous verdict — in so far there is a 

common conscience among civilized men. 
But, on the other hand, who has failed to observe that, 
when it comes to particulars, even among members of 
the same family circle, and still more among those 
whose life experiences have been widely different, the 
verdicts of conscience are quite different? The con- 
science of your most honored friend or of your dearly 
loved wife may lead him or her to disapprove of that 
which you earnestly regard as right; or, on the other 
hand, they may approve of something which you can- 
not but consider wrong. Now whence comes this 
similarity and this variety — this general likeness of 
moral judgment, yes, and of moral instinct, among 
people having a common civilization, together with 
unlikeness of moral instinct and judgment as between 
people on different planes of civilization, and further 
unlikeness in many particulars among people who in a 
general sense share the same high civilization? It is 
significant that the difference in moral judgment last 
referred to shows itself in a noteworthy degree only 
among the more highly civilized races; that the con- 
sciences of a dozen individuals taken at random from a 
savage race will be in more perfect agreement than the 
consciences of a dozen individuals similarly taken from 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 107 

some European people. Does this not clearly point 
to the fact that man's judgments as to right and wrong, 
whether instinctive or deliberate, are the result of the 
race and individual experiences as to that which fur- 
thers wellbeing? And if it be asked, "Whose well- 
being. — my own, my neighbor's, my family's, that of 
my tribe or nation, that of mankind, that of the world, 
or that of God?" — I think we may answer: Primarily 
that of the social-political unit, the horde or tribe or 
nation, but ultimately that of the individual, to whose 
continuous wellbeing the wellbeing of the society in 
which he lives is of fundamental importance. 

If it be true that our moral conceptions have their 
origin in the experiences of the race and of the individ- 
ual, as indicated above, we can readily understand 
that the morality of the savage, with his narrow life, 
should be quite different from that of the civilized man, 
with his broad horizon. The child of civilized parents 
probably inherits certain instincts which make him, to 
start with, a better man — i. e. a more beneficent as 
well as a more pleasant and urbane human being — 
than his savage cousin; over and above this there are 
the traditional moral judgments of the society into 
which he is born, which are likely to be impressed upon 
him so early in life that they seem almost instinctive; 
and finally there is his own judgment of what is beauti- 
ful and good, to direct his moral life. But in view of 
the fact that the members of a so-called civilized com- 
munity are by no means all upon exactly the same 
plane of civilization, that indeed every so-called civiliz- 
ed state still has various grades of civilization repre- 



108 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

sented in its population, — some of the denizens of the 
slums of our great centres of culture, and sometimes 
also the inhabitants of the more remote and isolated 
country regions, being nearer barbarism than true 
civilization; and in view of the further fact that the 
variety and complexity of civilized life tends to foster 
differentiation, — we should expect that all the elements 
above referred to as entering into morality — instinct, 
tradition, and individual judgment — would differ some- 
what, both in their content and in their relative 
weight, with the different members of a civilized society; 
although the second, the moral tradition, may be ex- 
pected to be pretty uniform in its operation. That 
which, for generations, within a given society had been 
regarded as good or as evil, is likely to impress itself 
reasonably early even upon the more unfortunate 
members of the community, who have been born and 
reared in homes of vice, ignorance and poverty. 

I am sometimes disposed to sum up the truth as to 
moral evil in the statement that it is the result of human 
ignorance; but I should rather say that it 
always, injuri- is the result of human incapacity, although 
doer!°and if" 11 " in most cases, but not in all, the incapacity 
witTwisdom would be gone if the ignorance of the 
^reasonable wrongdoer were overcome. The wise man 
ihs" due— L knows that his own highest good, his own 
a. Either to happiness, is dependent upon the wellbeing 

ignorance. rjr m l f ° 

of society at large, and this again upon that 
of its individual members. If then it should occur to 
him to do aught against the interests of society (and 
every injury to an individual is an indirect attack 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 109 

against society, since it is an action hostile to that 
which society seeks to effect, — the wellbeing of the 
individual members who compose it, — and tends to 
weaken the social structure), he would be checked by 
the consideration that such conduct would, in the long- 
run, be an attack upon himself; that he would be 
weakening the social bond, upon which he himself de- 
pends for the great part of that which makes life valu- 
able. Indeed for one who has gained so much insight 
into human nature as to recognize that our highest 
happiness arises from human sympathy, or, in other 
words, that the pleasures of life which give man his 
greatest happiness are moral pleasures, the same con- 
clusion is reached without the necessity of considering 
that somewhat vague entity yclept "socie- 
b. or to the ty " in the chain of reasoning. The man 

unsymmetrical . . 

development of moral insight knows at once that he 
faculties. who does evil to another robs himself of 

that high joy which comes from sympathy 
with the wellbeing of others, and at the same time so 
dulls his own sensibilities as to make him less capable 
of experiencing the finer joys of life in the future. The 
man who is without sympathy for others may still 
enjoy a beefsteak, a yacht, even the sweet fragrance 
of the rose; but is or is not the happiness of loving 
greater than these pleasures? And does not every 
ungenerous deed we do, either hurt us because we love, 
or coarsen us more and more and so tend to incapaci- 
tate us for the love and sympathy which make life 
rich and beautiful? 



110 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

But let us now consider the kind of moral evil that 
is attributable to the undue strength of the lower ani- 
mal passions, rather than to mental dull- 
Analysis of the ness. Take the case of manslaughter. Of 

crime of one . 

in whose na- the three elements which contribute to 

ture the lower . . 

qualities over- morality — mstmct, social tradition, and 

balance the . . . . ' 

higher. mdividual ethical opmion, — the first alone 

seems to be powerful enough to make 
murder and manslaughter uncommon crimes in highly 
civilized societies. The adult product of a high civiliza- 
tion is pretty sure to have an instinctive repugnance to 
human bloodshed. While the savage kills joyously, 
the civilized man kills, if at all, with an inward protest. 
Although it exerts a great influence however, this in- 
fluence is by no means strong enough in the breasts of 
all who live among civilized people to keep them from 
taking human life. But those in whom the instinctive 
repugnance to the taking of human life is not strong, 
may yet be prevented from the commission of such a 
deed by the social tradition that murder and man- 
slaughter are damnable crimes, worthy of the direst 
penalty, — even though these persons be too unintel- 
ligent to form a clear mental picture of the evils that 
result from such a deed, and thus of forming for them- 
selves a deliberate judgment as to its wrongfulness. 
Nevertheless such crimes do occur. Let us take the 
case of a young man who in a passion of rage and 
jealousy has stabbed his own brother to the heart. 
Here neither a personal judgment of the wrongfulness 
of such a deed, the traditional acceptance of its wicked- 
ness, nor an instinctive repugnance to human bloodshed 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 111 

have prevented the commission of the crime. Some- 
one may suggest that he was "out of himself" by 
reason of drunkenness and passion; but upon investi- 
gation it appears that he had drunk no liquor. Passion 
then, we conclude, must have overpowered his reason 
and his humanity. We find that he was subject to 
violent outbreaks of passion when his will was crossed. 
It appears that the animal instinct of destructiveness, 
carried to the limit of his physical powers, against 
anything that might stand in the way of the satis- 
faction of his immediate desires, has in this case over- 
powered every other influence and made this man a 
fratricide. Now let us not forget that this instinc- 
tive impulse- which leaves no room for paltering or 
hesitation, but prompts to an immediate physical 
attack upon that which stands in one's way, is in itself 
a valuable possession for man as well as for the lower 
animals. It is the basis of physical courage and also of 
that which distinguishes the man of action from the 
mere dreamer. But on the lower, more purely animal 
planes of life, this instinct is more valuable, goes farther 
toward making the individual successful, and plays a 
much greater part in the sum total of existence, than 
is the case on the higher planes of culture, where the 
crafty Ulysses becomes a more potent factor in society 
than the impetuous Achilles. Bearing this in mind, 
it becomes evident that the crime in question was a 
result of imperfect development of the criminal's 
nature into harmony with the conditions of civilized 
life. In his case a valuable trait of animal and even of 
human nature, which in moderation is regarded as a 



112 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

virtue among civilized men, and which even as it ex- 
isted in his nature would probably have been reckoned 
a virtue in a savage community, had been insufficiently 
balanced by the higher, later-developed traits that 
characterize the more perfectly developed products of 
civilization, in whom reflection, humanity and brother- 
ly love would have so restrained jealousy and destruc- 
tiveness as to have made the crime in question impos- 
sible. 

The normal civilized man is one in whom the various 
qualities that go to make up human nature as we know 
it (and in which both destructiveness and the physical 
passions of lust have their legitimate place) are sym- 
metrically developed and balanced. He is not without 
combativeness and destructiveness, but reason and 
conscience lead him to combat and destroy that which 
is realty evil; he is not without sexual lust, but this is 
melted into the higher feeling of love, which makes 
him gentle and considerate as well as eager. In the 
abnormal man upon whom civilization has not yet 
done its work, although he may be found in a civilized 
community, the qualities that characterize developed 
humanity are not symmetrically developed; some one 
or more (and naturally these are likely to be the lower, 
i. e. the older, more fundamental traits, which he has 
in common with the lower animals) have an over- 
powering sway. This may be due to unfortunate 
training or lack of training; to the fact that his child- 
hood and youth were passed among low-natured men 
and women, without the advantages of mental or 
moral education. In this case he is certainly to be 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 113 

pitied rather than to be blamed. But it is also possible 
that he may have an inherently low nature, which no 
attempt at moral culture has been able to overcome. 
He may have had advantages, but have failed to re- 
spond to them. Although brought up among kind, 
wise and loving people, he may have remained always 
cruel, violent and untrustworthy. What are we to think 
of such a case? Is it possible that in the twentieth 
century, in the full light of biological, psychological 
and pathological science, any thoughtful and educated 
man can believe that the explanation is simply that 
the immoral person in question has wickedly and de- 
liberately preferred evil to good? Is it not clear that 
what we have to do with is a case of abnormal develop- 
ment or of lack of development, and that the being in 
question is more or less a moral idiot? 

Such a case is in fact a case of moral atavism. In 
physical characteristics, in form, coloring and features, 
etc., as well as in tastes and inclinations, it 
is not unusual to find that a person strik- 
ingly resembles a grandparent or perhaps a much more 
remote ancestor, — the resemblance between these re- 
moter kinsmen being much greater than that between 
father and son or between any of the intermediate 
members of the ancestral line. Hardly anything is 
more interesting or more puzzling than the way in 
which now one and now another strain of the ancestral 
blood predominates in the progeny. In the field of 
artificial breeding it sometimes happens that from an 
egg produced by the mating of two birds of the same 
well-marked, highly developed artificial variety, will 



114 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

come a bird resembling in all observable respects the 
simple wild pigeons that were the ancestors of the 
fancy breed. These cases of atavism we know as facts, 
although the biologists have not yet been able to ex- 
plain them fully. The study of embryology has shown 
us how, beginning at the moment of conception, each 
human life seems to repeat in its own development 
that of the ancestral animal stock out of which the 
genus Homo has developed. The occasional birth of 
human monstrosities shows us how some slight pre- 
natal influence may arrest or disturb the course of this 
development, and give us an early type instead of a 
late one. 

Such biological facts as these suggest the natural 

explanation for the case of irremediably perverse, 

"bad" natures, when found in families 

Evil natures tin 

are to be ex- most oi whose members have fine moral 
dispositions. And the fact already re- 
ferred to, that in the population of every so- 
called civilized state there are really many grades of 
civilization represented, and the further fact that 
vicious surroundings, bad environment, will go far to 
neutralize or destroy the hard-won gains of generations 
of moral culture, — leave no ground for surprise that 
there should be thousands of low natures, of "bad" 
persons, in every society. 

But let us not forget the cheering fact that the hope- 
lessly bad cases are exceptional. Ninety-nine times 
out of a hundred in the case of perverse natures, 
careful treatment, the right education at the hands 
of wise, patient and sympathetic men and women, 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 115 

will make of these unpromising characters — not an- 
gels, not even strong and noble men and women, if we 

are to take the very best of humanity as 
cannofbe'edu- the standard, but still fairly lovable men 
ft^ar^hoT/ver and women and tolerably respectable citi- 
tion y ai excep " zens > as the average rims. It may well be 

that the ordinary home and school training 
of the day, which suffices to make of the average child 
an average man or woman, will not make a respectable 
man of the exceptionally evil-disposed child, however 
good the intentions and sincere the love of the parents 
and teachers. The education of a difficult nature takes 
wisdom as well as love, tact as well as good intentions; 
and the mere fact that good and well-meaning parents, 
who have succeeded with their other children, have yet 
failed to overcome the evil in one of these perverse 
natures, should by no means lead us to despair of such 
cases. 

Education, then, in the broad sense that denotes 
such a development of human nature as shall be made 

possible, on the one hand, by affording to 
Evil, moral and the youth of each generation the greatest 
overcome^in be possible opportunity for the exercise and 
mTs r ha°if by s symmetrical development of all the various 
kno e witdfe h of faculties of human nature (physical, men- 
an?noni U uman ( tal and emotional) and, on the other 
fe^ wnttoi"" hand, by presenting to our youth such an 
over nature. epitome of the knowledge and wisdom thus 

far gained by the human race as shall put 
them abreast of their times, and thus make possible 
for each generation the most rapid progress in the 



116 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

arts and sciences and in philosophy, — this true educa- 
tion is the means by which we are to meet and over- 
come evil, both physical and moral. So long as we are 
ignorant, imperfect, finite beings, mere men and women, 
not gods, we shall not wholly vanquish it; but let us be 
serious students of the great book of nature, seeking to 
understand ourselves and the wonderful universe in 
which we live, at once with the wholesome, open- 
minded curiosity of the little child and with the earnest- 
ness and judgment of mature and educated men and 
women, and we may be sure that each generation will 
make certain and considerable progress in the conquest 
of evil of every kind! 



V 
HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 



To thine own self be true, 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man. 
Shakespeare 



Perhaps in popular estimation no two things stand 
farther apart than ethics and egoism. When, however, 
one substitutes morality and happiness for 
Practical out- these terms, the breach does not appear 
dua e in f tem-" to b e so great. While ethical and egoistic 
Iftherby'ethfcti conduct seem to a great part of mankind 
tive g wouid 1 be" to De opposed to each other, happiness and 
the S same! Uy morality are regarded by most as merely 
different, not necessarily antagonistic. With 
the exception of a class of narrow-minded ascetics 
whose conception of life is generally discredited today, 
the civilized world recognizes that one may be moral 
without being quite miserable, and that the enjoyment 
of a moderate amount of happiness now and then in 
the course of a lifetime is not in and of itself conclusive 
proof of wickedness. Unfortunately not very much 
more than this has gained general acceptance, although 
an earnest and thoughtful consideration of the sub- 
ject, a careful examination of what is involved in these 
two terms, must convince a candid mind that the rela- 
117 



118 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

tion of these two things, morality and happiness, is 
much closer than is usually supposed; and inasmuch 
as happiness is admittedly that for which egoism seeks, 
and morality is but the popular name for ethical con- 
duct, this means that the relation between ethics and 
egoism is an intimate one — so intimate, I venture to 
maintain, that the practical outcome of conduct directed 
by either of these principles would be substantially 
identical. 

Let me hasten to add that this is no merely academic 
question. It is one of great practical importance both 
for our happiness and for our virtue. Were that 
a recognition which I shall endeavor to make clear 
wouid S tend h to generally understood, — I do not mean 
better and oth accepted as a logical theorem, but appre- 
happier. ciated, felt to be true (for a mere intellect- 

ual acquiescence in anything, without the feeling of its 
truth, is not knowledge, in the full sense of the term, 
is not understanding), — we should be both better and 
happier than we are. 

To many the proposition I have advanced as to the 
practical identity of intelligent egoistic and ethical con- 
duct will seem absurdly false, if not the direct opposite 
of the truth. To others it may seem quite possible 
that the terms involved should be so conceived that 
the proposition would have a certain logical validity of 
a theoretical sort; but even those who admit this will 
in most cases, I fear, feel that it would be undesirable to 
proclaim this as a truth (even though, in a certain sense, 
it should be one), lest the selfishness of ordinary human- 
ity should take hold of the alleged truth from the 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 119 

wrong side and find in it an excuse for self-indulgence 
and vice. I am anxious, at the outset, to emphasize the 
fact that I regard this supposed danger as unsubstantial 
and to state my earnest conviction that, on the con- 
trary, the improvement in the morality of the average 
man and woman that would come from the under- 
standing of this proposition makes it our duty to bring 
this truth to recognition. 

Before proceeding further let me call attention to 

the fact that the proposition advanced above is both 

theoretically and practically different from 

historic utilitarianism. Theoretically the 

between our utilitarianism of Bentham had no more to 

thesis and 

historic utiii- d with egoism than idealism has; it 

tanamsm, ° 

which is a differed, it is true, from theological and 

theory of social § ° 

duty, according transcendental theories of ethics in frank- 
to which the ... . 

happiness of ]y positing human wellbeing as both the 

a minority of / K & & .... 

individuals may immediate and the ultimate ethical aim, 

be sacrificed to . , , . 

the good of the the ethical ideal; but it was not egoistic 
wellbeing, not the happiness of the indi- 
vidual, but the wellbeing of the mass, 
"the greatest good of the greatest number, " that con- 
stituted the ethical ideal of this school. The theory 
was indeed less individualistic, less egoistic, than the 
ethics of the churches, which made the ethical pur- 
pose consist in the salvation of the individual's soul. 
Although many of the ablest of the utilitarians may 
have been personally convinced that the happiness of 
the individual would in the main be best realized by 
his striving for the greatest good of the greatest num- 
ber the theory itself was a theory of social duty, not of 



120 RELIGIO DOCTOEIS 

individual happiness, and was entirely consistent with 
the possibility that the happiness of a minority of individ- 
uals might have to be sacrificed to the wellbeing of the 
majority. And the later utilitarians, influenced by the 
study of biology, to which the general acceptance of 
the doctrine of evolution has caused more and more 
importance to be attributed by the ethical philosopher, 
have exhibited a very marked tendency to regard the 
good of the society, or of the race, and that of the in- 
dividual as very different things. This seems to be the 
dominant ethical conception of the present time, the 
point of agreement for those who in other respects en- 
tertain quite different views. Notwithstanding the 
fact that Herbert Spencer is generally supposed to have 
believed that the truest ethical progress is to be at- 
tained by allowing to the individual the largest freedom 
in seeking his own happiness, a careful reading of his 
works brings to light three distinct ethical aims, — the 
good of the race, the good of the family, and the good 
of the individual, — which, according to him, are not 
identical, but are to be brought into equilibrium by 
means of his formula of justice. He points out that 
the sacrifice of the individual for the sake of the race 
may be necessary, and directs attention to the fact that 
the good of the race is largely concerned with posterity; 
a lead that has been followed by his critic, Mr. Benjamin 
Kidd, in whose ethical teaching the central thought 
seems to be the antithesis between present and future 
good, — i. e. between the good of the race, of posterity, 
and the happiness of the individual that is now in being. 
And the last named gentleman seems to think that not 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 121 

that which helps us to enjoy life is good, but only that 
conduct which shall contribute to the wellbeing of a 
posterity whose interests are, in his opinion, largely op- 
posed to ours. While this apparent disregard for the 
happiness of those who now people the earth may seem 
to be antipodal to the doctrine of utilitarianism, which 
declares the greatest good of the greatest number to be 
the ethical ideal, yet from the point of view that the 
present generation is a minority as compared with the 
generations that are yet to come, it may still be regarded 
as having for its end the greatest good of the greatest 
number; and further than this, as I have intimated, it 
has in fact an historical connection with the utilitarian- 
ism of Bentham. 

The erroneousness of this idea of a fundamental 
opposition either between that which gives Pleasure 
and that which is Right, or between the 
antagonism be- g°°d oi the individual and of the social 
iHeafaiu Lid whole, or between the interests of the living 
tween' the goL'd an d of posterity (and in one form or an- 
ua/and'ttat'of °ther the opposition seems to be main- 
twee e n y thl S-" tained b y most of tne thinkers of our day), 
terestsofthe j sna u endeavor to show. Let us first 

living and those 

fais P e° sterity ' see k to understand what is meant by 
egoistic and what by ethical conduct. By 
egoistic conduct I mean such conduct on the part of an 
individual as is adopted by him for the purpose of 
securing to himself the greatest happiness possible. I 
would call attention, in passing, to the fact that the 
definition would be equally correct if we should sub- 
stitute the word "pleasure" for "happiness. " It seems 
however, that to most persons the term "pleasure" 



122 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

suggests only the lower, sensuous pleasures, and not at 
all the higher and more ideal pleasures, which spring 
from the imagination and the social affections and which 
find their satisfaction in the realization of beauty, in 
the establishment of truth, and in generous acts of 
private and public service. It is unfortunate that in 
the minds of so many the term pleasure should have 
such a limited connotation; for the limitation is an 
improper one and it has been the source of much mis- 
understanding as well as of great injustice toward many 
high-minded Epicureans of ancient and modern times. 
The term happiness is of course subject to the same 
improper limitation; but as a matter of fact it is not so 
often nor so greatly misunderstood. 

Egoistic conduct, then, having as its controlling 

principle the happiness of the individual 
duct S define<i. whose conduct it is, what is ethical or 

moral conduct? 
A short and seemingly simple answer is that ethical 
conduct has for its controlling principle duty, righteous- 
ness or goodness. But the simplicity of this answer is 

specious. The truth is brought out in the 
d '&Sn ty ethicai accom P anvul g essay on the Problem of Evil 
conduct. (pp. 103, 104), that if by duty obedience 

to conscience is meant, then ethical conduct 
is a purely subjective conception, subject to immeas- 
urable variation according to the different views of in- 
dividuals : man-slaughter and drunkenness being highly 
ethical from the standpoint of men on the plane of the 
early Teutons; total abstinence and polygamy being 
right for the Muslim; celibacy and the mortification 
of the flesh having the approval of the conscience of 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 123 

the Indian fakir and the mediaeval Christian saint; 
vegetarianism and the subordination of human beings 
to a host of sacred animals being righteousness for the 
Brahmin; and while the confession of one's sins to a 
priest is regarded as an imperative duty by all Chris- 
tians outside of the Protestant folds, the Greek Catholic 
Church insists that these confessions shall be heard by 
married priests alone, while the Roman Catholic 
Church is equally positive that only a celibate may re- 
ceive confessions. 

To say that ethical conduct has goodness for its aim, 
leaves us quite in the dark as to the criterion for right- 
eousness or goodness. It is a serious error to regard 
goodness as an absolute conception, a substantive 
thing, an idea complete in itself. Goodness is in itself 
an incomplete term, and must have a complement ex- 
pressed or implied. As some one has cleverly said, if 
a man or a thing is not good for something, he or it 
must be good for nothing. What is it then, let us ask 
ourselves again, that makes ethical or moral conduct 
good? for what is it good? 

A study of human development offers us an answer 

to this question, an answer that is indeed suggested by 

the etymology of both the Greek and the 

Morality con- Latin term. The nouns from which the 

sidered in the , . 

light of history, adjectives ethical and moral are derived 
signify habitual conduct, manner, or tradi- 
tional custom. Ethical or moral conduct, then, meant 
originally conduct that was in conformity to the usages 
of the community, — of the horde, clan, tribe, city or 
state, — and which was accordingly hallowed by tradi- 
tion and supported by the sanction of religion. In an 



124 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

early stage of human development ethical, or moral, 
had indeed a like significance with religious; since 
nothing seems to be better established than that among 
primitive people everywhere conduct is strictly con- 
trolled by tradition, and that the religious sanction 
attaches itself to every traditional usage — "the tyran- 
ny of fashion" was in early times no mere fa con de 
parler, but a veritable political and religious control. 
Then, indeed, the innovator who would do things in an 
unconventional way was not merely frowned upon by 
the best society and condemned for "bad form"; he 
was held to be guilty of sacrilege, and was liable to the 
punishment of outlawry and death. 

Having found in traditional usage the historical 
foundation of ethics, if we now ask ourselves, further, 
what reasonable justification there is for traditional 
sanction as the foundation of ethics, an answer is not 
lacking. It is given us in the biological theory of the 
survival of the fittest. Those individuals and those 
social groups survive and multiply whose conduct is 
adapted to their actual environment, — that is, whose 
actual reactions to the stimuli afforded by their sur- 
roundings (reactions that have reference not alone 
to nature external to man, but also to other members 
of the same group and to members of other social 
groups) are of such a nature as to favor the continued 
existence of the individuals or the races that react in this 
particular way. All knowledge, let us remember, rests 
largely on empiricism; and that primitive man should 
be the empiricist par excellence is but natural. At a 
very early stage of civilization the more intelligent 
members of the social group seem to have found that 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 125 

the integrity and permanence of the group was main- 
tained when its individuals acted in a particular way ; 
such conduct, they may have reasoned, propitiated the 
powerful spirits upon whose favor their prosperity was 
dependent; such conduct would therefore be regarded 
at once as an economic necessity, a political obligation, 
and a religious duty. As it is not to be expected that 
the unscientific mind of primitive society should discrim- 
inate nicely between the essential and the accidental, 
the conception of moral obligation naturally attached 
itself to much that was merely accidental, and had no 
real value in the struggle for existence, even for the 
tune and place in which the custom was established. 
Hence the meaninglessness of not a few of the moral 
and religious customs prescribed among uncivilized 
people. Even today we have not gotten wholly past 
the stage when, to adopt Charles Lamb's delightful 
little allegory, we think it necessary to burn down a 
hut every time we would enjoy the delicious flavor of 
roast pig. 

Of course the time would be likely to come when 
changing conditions (perhaps arising from the very 
growth and prosperity of the community 
changelnmorai that was the result of its scrupulously 
thsuthey may religious observance of the earlier tradi- 
^e r acd d co°n- tional morality) would be such that the 
S^SL *?' traditional morality would no longer be 
tragedy* 9°°d ^ OT * ne society; its traditional morality 

might have been adapted to the prosperity 
of a small savage band of hunters and fishers, but 
might not be adapted to the economy of a considerable 



126 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

tribe of men that had entered upon the pastoral stage 
of human development. But inasmuch as the tradi- 
tional morality has the sanction of religion, the read- 
justment to the new condition is no easy matter. To 
the priests and elders and to those most under the 
influence of tutelage — the children and the women, it 
may be — a deviation from the customs of the ancestors, 
from the traditional morality, will seem to be grievous 
sacrilege: while for the men in the prune of life whose 
activity is most closely associated with the changing 
conditions, the leaders in war and industry and trade, 
whose life has been touched by conditions outside of 
the traditional circle, who have been affected by con- 
tact with strange peoples having different customs, 
who perhaps have been compelled by force of strange 
circumstances to depart from some tradition of con- 
duct, and who have nevertheless reaped good instead of 
evil therefrom, — for these the traditional morality 
will not have such an irresistible power and mastery. 
Hence arises what is perhaps the most tragic element 
in human history, — the struggle between the traditional 
morality that is no longer adapted to the actual con- 
ditions of life, but with which all the associations of 
history, of piety and patriotism, of poetry and duty, 
are interwoven, and the practical ethics that has its 
basis in the necessities of life as it is at the given time 
and place, but which has not yet received the sanction 
of religion nor been hallowed by tradition, and, though 
it be really higher, more generous and magnanimous, 
more humane, more spiritual, than the traditional 
morality, yet generally seems to the conservatives, 
and often even to many of those who in practice adopt 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 127 

it, either an immoral, base and ugly utilitarianism, or 
— as when Christian ethics were struggling against the 
ethnic religions of the ancient world — a fanatical and 
impious idealism. 

When in the struggle of the new ethics against the 

old the new fails to win the day, the society decays. 

When, on the other hand, the new con- 

without such ception of ethics really makes headway, 

change in moral . " i-n 

conceptions it may do so either by a gradual modinca- 

society would . . . 

decay; but the tion of the old, with the more vital elements 

change may be »,.,., • , ■ , • A 

so gradual as ot which the new is combined into a new 

almost to escape . 

observation. whole, which yet comes into existence so 
gradually that the extent of the change is 
not clearly apparent (as in the case of the development 
of Jewish ethics from the crude and cruel particularism, 
associated with religious hentheism, presented in the 
book of Judges, to the broad humanitarianism, as- 
sociated with true monotheism, which we find in the 
second Isaiah and in the teachings of Jesus), or by a 
seemingly revolutionary process in which the new is 
substituted for the old (as in the case of the apparent 
conquest of the ethics of classical and of Teutonic and 
Celtic heathendom by the ethics of the brotherhood 
of man contained in Christianity, — in which case 
however, as a matter of fact, much of the old was really 
smuggled into the new; the religion which took its name 
from the apostle of love having been actually propa- 
gated by the swords of Chlodwig and Karl the Great, 
and many heathen practices and heathen views having 
become a part of the tradition of the Christian Church) . 
A careful study of history shows us that the ethical 
system of every progressive people undergoes continual 



128 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

modification, but the change in moral ideas is generally 
so gradual as to be unobserved by the great number 
of those among whom it takes place. No attentive 
and candid student of history, however, would main- 
tain that the ethics actually taught in the homes (by 
precept or example), or even the teaching of the official 
hierarchy of the Christian Church, was the same in the 
first, the fourth, the fifteenth, and the nineteenth 
century. There are of course certain conceptions 
that are common to all of these periods ; but neverthe- 
less the Christianity of the first century and that of 
the fourth were very different, and either of these was 
quite different from either Roman or Protestant Chris- 
tianity in the fifteenth century. Both the theology and 
the accepted ethics of these different epochs were 
different, and the ethical conceptions that prevailed 
at any one of these periods were dissimilar from those 
of today. 

As a child under Protestant instruction I was given 
the impression that religious persecution and physical 
punishment for heresy were peculiar to Roman Catholic 
Christianity; and that the reason they are not widely 
practised by Catholics today is that the Romanists 
are not now strong enough to venture on such drastic 
measures. When later I studied history for myself 
and learned that Protestants also persecuted and 
killed in the name of religion, and indeed that, at a 
period generations later than the Reformation era, it 
was in Protestant communities that the pitifully cruel 
and absurd witchcraft trials and executions took place, 
I realized that it was neither Romanism nor Protest- 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 129 

antism as such that caused these evils, but an unen- 
lightened moral consciousness characteristic of the 
particular stage of civilization in question — for which, 
it must of course be granted, the actual teachings of 
the clergy of both the mother and the daughter church 
were not without responsibility, but which nevertheless 
was not an essential part of either form of Christianity. 
The Presbyterian layman with whom I was in conver- 
sation yesterday professes to believe just what Calvin 
taught, but it would be impossible to gain his consent 
to the execution of an atheist or an alleged witch, 
much less of a Unitarian or a Quaker, upon religious 
grounds; and although Cardinal Vaughan, of England, 
and Archbishop Ireland, of the United States, are 
among the stanchest pillars of the mother Church, and 
profess that Catholic truth is one and unchangeable, 
we are perfectly confident that neither religious execu- 
tion nor inquisitorial torture would receive their ap- 
proval or would be possible in any part of the world 
over which their influence might extend. 

It is well for us to recognize the fact that from a 
purely theoretical point of view it is not difficult to 
reconcile religious persecutions with the faith professed 
by the civilized world. Let us remember that the 
idle hermit and the active philanthropist, the militant 
crusader, the cruel inquisitor, the intolerant Puritan 
and the non-resistant Quaker, each found the justifica- 
tion for his life and conduct in the vast and various 
treasury of Scripture from which the several Christian- 
ities of the last two thousand years have been minted. 
We read in these Scriptures that the inhabitants of 
Palestine were driven from their homes by Jehovah's 



130 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

people in accordance with his instructions; and that 
according to the command of the God of Israel, as set 
forth in Deuteronomy, not only the men of the heathen 
cities were to be dispossessed and killed, but the women 
and the children were to be put to the sword. And 
Jesus himself is reported to have said that he came 
not to bring peace but a sword; that brother should 
rise up against brother and son against father. We 
also read in the New Testament that it is better to cut 
off the offending hand and pluck out the offending eye 
than to risk the loss of Heaven. Since, then, the 
matter of fundamental importance is represented to be 
the salvation of the immortal soul, not the -mundane 
wellbeing of the short-lived human body, it is easy to 
see how a faithful, conscientious Christian, believing 
his own creed to be the true rendering of that religious 
truth which God through his early prophets and through 
his son Jesus Christ and the church established by him 
had given to men for their guidance, and loving the 
immortal souls of his brother-men more than their 
perishable bodies, should feel bound to torture these 
bodies to the last extremity if there were no other way 
of bringing them to the acceptance of spiritual truth, 
and to destroy the bodies of a few thousands if thereby 
their souls could be brought back to God or the souls 
of millions of others could thus be prevented from 
going astray. This point of view and this line of con- 
duct is just as consistent with the letter of the Christian 
Scriptures and the traditions of the Christian Church as 
is that conception of the gospel of love which you and 
I believe to be a truer interpretation of Jesus' thought; 
and so the good Christians of the day in which the 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 131 

public temper was habituated to violence very natural- 
ly appealed to it to bring about the conquest of the 
Right. But the gentler tone of mind and the more 
_. . . . sensitive natures of a period in which the 

The higher _ ... 

morality of the predominance of industrialism over mili- 

last hundred l 

years as com- tarism has made peace the normal condi- 

pared with that _ r 

of the earlier tion and war the exception, lead us now to 

Christian cen- . x 

turies, is due to shrink irom such practices as inhuman, 

a better under- * 

standing of and we turn to other texts lor guidance 

men's place in . . . 

nature rather and construe our religious authorities dil- 
carefui study of ferently. It is practically impossible for 

Scripture. / . 

men upon our present stage ol civilization 
to feel (whatever they may say they think) that body 
and soul are so utterly distinct that I can love the soul 
while I torture the body to death. And the difference 
in point of view is not, I believe, due to a more careful 
study of the Scriptures on our part, but to a larger 
knowledge of nature, and a correspondingly truer feel- 
ing as to the unity of life, and a deeper and more genuine 
sympathy with all that is. 

But after all, stronger than all our theories, whether 
based upon the severe or the gentle passages of Scrip- 
ture, whether based upon authority at all 
it is custom that or upon an earnest study of things as they 

actually con- f J 1 & , J 

trois morality, are (as we find them) and the attempt m 
our philosophy of life to mirror the laws of 
universal existence, — stronger for the guidance of in- 
dividual human conduct than all our theories is habit. 
it is this, the customs of the race and of the community, 
rather than the teachings of our priests or philosophers, 
that makes our morality what it is. And this it comes 
about that the more flagrant forms of violence being 



132 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

inconsistent with the habits of life of an advanced in- 
dustrial civilization, the weight of tradition upon such 
a civilization would need to be extraordinarily heavy 
to keep it from so bringing its theoretical ethics into line 
with its practical morality, upon this point, as to de- 
nounce methods of physical violence. 

The foregoing hasty review of the etymology of the 
words ethical and moral, and of the origin and develop- 
ment of morality itself, should help us to 
Ethical conduct understand the modern significance of the 

may now be . ■>• • 

denned as that terms. Etymologically, morality is what 

which is con- , ,?.,,. 

ducive to the is customary; historically, it means the 

welfare of man- . 

kind. kmd of conduct that, having proven favor- 

able to the wellbeing of society, became 
customary and was recognized as good. As society has 
widened, — that is, as men have entered more and more 
largely into amicable relations with those outside of 
their immediate kindred and beyond their immediate 
neighborhood, — morality has become higher. Ethics 
being the science or theory of morality, the significance 
of ethical and moral may for our present purpose be 
regarded as identical, and we may conclude that for 
civilized man in the twentieth century ethical conduct 
is such as is conducive to the welfare of mankind. 

In the light of the definitions at which we have ar- 
rived I would now restate my belief that, although 
Restatement moral conduct be philanthropic conduct 
having for its end the best interests of 
mankind, while egoistic conduct has for its purpose the 
highest happiness — or, if you will, the greatest pleasure 
—of the individual actor, yet the intelligent pursuit of 
either of these ends achieves also the other. 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 13S 

I need hardly insist upon the fact indicated by 

Aristotle and developed and emphasized again and 

again, especially by Herbert Spencer and 

Because the the evolutionary sociologists of the last 

welfare is uiti- half century, that man is so thoroughly 



ent upon that a "political animal," so pre-eminently a 

of society, im- .,,. , ,..,.., , ,„ 

moral conduct social being, that his individual welfare is 

is hostile to his ° 

own interests, dependent upon the prosperity of the 
particular human community of which he 
is a member — upon its ability to maintain itself in the 
struggle for existence with other groups and other races 
of men and animals and with the hardships of external 
nature, its success in turning the raw material of nature 
into means of enjoyment, in other words, upon the 
degree of intelligence and virtue it exhibits in the ac- 
quisition of wealth and in rendering its wealth ser- 
viceable for the happiness and development of its 
members and their posterity. In the long run, then, 
it is beyond question that immoral conduct (i. e., con- 
duct hostile to the best interests of society) will be 
destructive of the individual's possibilities of happiness. 
But while this is admitted, for what it may be worth, 
it is by no means regarded as conclusive of that for 
which I would contend. The answer is made that the 
individual in his pursuit of happiness is not primarily 
concerned with what is true in the long run, but with 
the present. It may be true that his opportunities 
for happiness would not be as great as they are if the 
conduct of his fore-runners and contemporaries had 
not been and were not moral, and that much of the 
possibility for happiness on the part of posterity may 



134 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

be destroyed by immoral conduct on his part and on 
that of his contemporaries ; but he may say that he will 
take now the goods the gods (i. e. his ancestors and his 
contemporaries) have provided, and will let the future 
take care of itself. 

"Tomorrow, didst thou say? Methought I heard Horatio say 

Tomorrow. 
Go to; I will not hear of it! 
'Tis a period nowhere to be found 
In all the hoary record of the past, except, perchance, 
In the fool's calendar. 

Or if the poet's authority should not appear to be 
sufficient to justify his selfish immorality, he may 
insist upon the fact that he owes nothing to posterity, 
which, as Mark Twain has put it, has never done any- 
thing for us; and as regards his predecessors, he may 
maintain that it is now out of his power to pay the debt 
he owes to them for the good he now enjoys. 

But while we would of course admit that there is a 
measure of sound philosophy in the preference of a 
certain present to an uncertain future, it 
ducfwhkh his remains true that as a matter of fact no 
nlze Is hostne normal member of the genus Homo sapiens, 
of thln^tves! especially in his civilized state, can shut 
ent^o/societ^ out f rom n ^ s consideration the immediate 
SpihedTy" f uture - The present for him is a relative 
moral condu^" term; and if he knew, for example, that 
to°the ha h iness indulgence in his favorite drink would with- 

of the perpetra- jn the next ten minutes bring on an ex- 
tor himself. m ° 

cruciating attack of gout which would last 
for weeks, it is safe to say that he would not (if he were 
still sober) take the drink, — even though it be freely 
granted that he might yield to the temptation if, in- 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 135 

stead of the certainty of an almost immediate penalty, 
there were only an exceedingly strong probability that 
in the course of no very long period of time he would 
have to suffer severely for his intemperance. Applying 
this vividness of appreciation of the proximate future — 
which is a part of the mental constitution of normal 
civilized man — to the matter in hand, we see that 
the inexpediency of immoral selfishness, even from the 
point of view of the egoist's happiness, is greater than 
it may at first have appeared to be. For he has to 
reckon, not alone with a vague entity yclept Society, 
but with his contemporaries, with his neighbors. Con- 
duct upon his part hostile to the welfare of society — 
and this is the essence of immorality — is pretty sure 
to draw upon himself the unfavorable attention of his 
fellows, as soon as they realize that his conduct is in- 
jurious to their interests; and the chances are that they 
will be able to make it so uncomfortable for him that 
he will have to abandon the course of immorality upon 
which he might have been disposed to proceed, and, 
selfish as he may be at heart, will lead a tolerably moral 
life, just because it is necessary to his own comfort and 
happiness to keep on decent terms with his fellows. 

Immorality is always an evidence of deficient under- 
standing either on the part of the individual, — as we 
immorality is see especially in the case of the flagrant 
dPficlent under- malefactors who, because of the natural 
onthrpartS 61 obtuseness of their sensibilities or their 
? r e S al inteUect or because of their unfortunate 
group. bringing-up, are too ignorant to realize 

how much more true happiness there would be in 



136 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

an honorable, temperate life, in harmony with the 
best aspirations of society, than is possible to the dis- 
eased debauchee or the hunted outlaw, — or on the 
part of society at large or of an influential section of 
it, — as is the case when the public opinion of society or 
of a class permits certain forms of vice, such as mis- 
treatment of members of one class by another, intem- 
perance in work or in recreation, unscrupulousness in 
business transactions, political corruption, etc. 

There is an enormous amount of such ignorance, — 
not total ignorance, but fatally inadequate knowledge, 

— and to it the immorality of our day is 
niustratld C by e mainly due. For the great bulk of our 
pohticai corrup- soc i a i } business and political immorality, 

society itself is responsible; in that society 
at large, or that part of it with which the wrongdoer 
has most to do, has no adequate sense of the injury to 
humanity that arises from these forms of vice, and 
hence no adequate sense of their immorality. There 
may be formal recognition that the conduct in question 
is not ideal, that it is not in accordance with the highest 
conception of virtue; but in that important section of 
the community to which the wrongdoer is, and feels 
himself to be, primarily responsible, there is no clear 
idea of why it is wrong and no real feeling of its moral 
turpitude. This is quite evident in that widespread 
kind of immorality illustrated by political corruption, 
the subordination of official duty to private ends. It 
exists and flourishes, not because of the extraordinary 
wickedness of those who happen to be most active in it, 
but because of the general sentiment throughout society 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 137 

that, while it would of course be wrong for a public 
steward to embezzle outright a thousand dollars of the 
money committed to his care, and to put it into his own 
pocket without giving a cent's equivalent therefor, 
yet it would be an entirely different thing for the same 
man to avail himself of the power of his position to 
appoint his son or daughter or the nephew of a friend 
at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars to spend an hour 
a day some six months in the year in doing poorly that 
for which he or she is incompetent or for the doing of 
which there is no real necessity. For while it is crimi- 
nal to steal outright, it's a man's right and duty to do 
all he can for his family and friends; and the man who 
doesn't do anything for his friends when he is in a 
position of influence — and of course there's no particu- 
lar credit in giving to a friend what he could have gotten 
on his own merits, even from a stranger — is either 
cold-hearted, mean and selfish, or else he's a victim of 
an extravagant kid-glove and silk-stocking Sunday- 
school morality that unfits a man for practical life and 
especially for the practice of the good old homely virtue 
of loyalty to one's friends. We may denounce public 
corruption very strongly, but so long as the point of 
view just set forth is that which the majority of active 
voters actually take, and which nine tenths of us tend 
to take when the matter has a personal interest for us, 
— when the question is as to making a place for our 
nephew or letting a contract at a high price to our 
uncle — we do not really feel that these practices are 
iniquitous; and until we do so feel, our alleged knowl- 
edge of their wrongfulness is a mere formal, not a real 
knowledge. 



138 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

The bearing of this upon the relation between egoistic 
and ethical conduct is that not egoism, — the desire to 
please one's self, to gain happiness for one's self, — but 
only dense stupidity, would lead an individual to adopt 
a line of conduct of the unquestionable immorality of 
which the society in which he lived was fully convinced 
and thoroughly aware. He may indeed be allowed to 
get pleasure for himself by doing things that his 
neighbors say are not consistent with the ideal of a 
perfect Christian gentleman; but selfishness itself, 
regard for his own happiness, will work to keep him 
from bumping his head against a stone wall, by doing 
those things of the injuriousness of which to themselves 
as the constituents of society (i. e., of the immorality of 
which) his fellows have a lively conviction. 

But even though this also be admitted; though it be 
granted not only that in the long run the happiness of 
the individual is dependent upon the good of society, 
or in other words, that egoistic satisfaction is dependent 
upon morality, but also that the immediate, present 
happiness of each individual is dependent upon respect 
for so much of the moral law as to the truth of which 
his fellows are unquestionably convinced and as to the 
obligation of which they are thoroughly in earnest, — it 
may still be said that it remains true that egoism may 
lead to immorality, either because society itself (as 
has been suggested in the foregoing discussion) has an 
inadequate understanding of the moral turpitude of 
certain kinds of conduct, or because the individual, 
lacking the intelligence or the education that would 
enable him to foresee for himself that there is more 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 139 

happiness in morality than in immorality, is too insen- 
sible to feel the lighter, and too stupid to anticipate 
the heavier punishments that society will certainly 
inflict upon him for his immorality. 

This is perfectly true. My contention is not that 

egoism produces moral conduct, but that it does so in 

proportion as it is intelligent; that if the 

while egoism pure egoist were perfectly intelligent and 

does not as \ •,-,.. , i i , , <> i 

such produce thoroughly informed, he would be perfectly 

morality, it will , , . " , , • , 

do so in pro- moral : that wisdom and virtue go together, 

portion as it is . 

intelligent. the truest wisdom being inconsistent with 
anything but the highest virtue or, to 
state the truth in negative and somewhat rough terms, 
that the knave is pro tanto a fool. Happiness and 
morality are by no means the same thing, but the 
former is conditioned by the latter; if you would have 
the greatest happiness you must practice the highest 
virtue. 

I cannot prove this, because happiness is a feeling, 
and psychological states do not readily lend themselves 
to mathematical measurement. I have, 
^easwe^are however, already gone two thirds of the 
ures al havfn" wa ^ toward establishing its truths by mere- 
their springs in Jy calling attention to the almost self- 
These give us evident facts, first, that the individual's 

most pleasure 

at the moment opportunities for pleasure are dependent 
longest. upon the welfare of society, and, secondly, 

that conduct clearly recognized as hostile 
to the welfare of society will bring immediate punish- 
ment upon the head of the wrongdoer. But the most 
important consideration is that which cannot be proven 



140 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

to exist if the mere statement does not carry conviction, 
to wit, that the greatest pleasures are moral pleasures; 
that our highest happiness is dependent upon sympathy 
and has its springs in the social affections and the 
imagination, through which it becomes possible to 
enter into the life of that which is outside of our own 
skins; that, for instance, the glow of pleasure which 
tingles in our every nerve at the contemplation of some 
noble, generous and loving deed, or, even sweeter per- 
haps, the joy which is ours at being ourselves able to 
express our sympathy for others or for another by some 
signal service, — this glow of happiness, this joyous 
exultation, is not only brighter, keener, higher, stronger 
at the moment than the greatest non-moral or purely 
sensuous pleasure, but it also lasts longer, and con- 
stitutes a permanent addition to our happiness. 

The purely sensuous pleasures add little to our happi- 
ness as compared with moral pleasures; first, as just 
intimated, because of their comparative impermanence; 
a taste, a smell, a physical contact, unless accompanied 
by some human or social — i. e., some potentially moral — 
association, having little or no power of revival. Even 
the pleasures from sights and sounds — less purely 
sensuous as they are, and more dependent upon the 
constructive imagination — are not infrequently de- 
pendent also upon human and moral associations for 
the permanence of the impression they produce. Fur- 
ther than this, there is the other fact mentioned above, 
that, as compared with moral pleasures, sensuous pleas- 
ures have less power to make us happy even while we 
are enjoying them. There are few human beings, I 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 141 

believe, that get greater pleasure from the sense of 
smell than I. The fragrance of some flowers gives me 
pleasure so exquisite as to be almost intoxicating. And 
yet in a garden filled with the most delicate perfumes 
I believe it would be possible for me to be quite miser- 
able (by reason of the moral, the human, content of my 
consciousness). But however hard fate may have 
dealt with one, I do not believe that it is possible 
for any one to be quite miserable at the moment of 
doing a generous deed; perhaps this can also be said 
of the moment in which one recognizes a generous 
action on the part of another. 

Whether the egoist's most desired pleasures be those 
of the senses, as the satisfaction of his gluttonous and 
lustful appetites, the stimulus of intoxi- 
couufbe ll " d ° er cants, the indulgence in luxurious idleness, 
JS^Vmo^ai or whether they be the satisfaction of his 
fidp e resum- vanity, by making a parade of wealth and 
pleasure from magnificence in dress and surroundings 
h£?avorite from before his fellows, or whether he be ambi- 
h^mi'ght^be^oo tious as well as vain, desiring to win the 
himsew for rt applause of the public as an artist or to 
^easures her S am anc * w^d real power over his fellows, 
— I feel confident that if the evildoer could 
once be made acquainted with moral pleasures by being 
brought to experience them, he would get more happi- 
ness from them than from his favorite vices. I do not, 
however, maintain that he would thereafter lead a 
uniformly virtuous life; for a low, undeveloped or 
distorted nature might well be too weak to persevere 
in the effort necessary to secure these higher and greater 



142 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

pleasures when the lesser ones to which he was habitu- 
ated were within easy reach. Still for the student of 
human nature who is also a lover of his kind (as every 
earnest student must be), nothing is more touching nor 
more hopeful than the outcropping of a long dormant 
but living germ of moral feeling in the lives of the most 
vicious — a phenomenon that has again and again been 
observed. The pleasure which a brutal, selfish criminal 
sometimes exhibits at having been surprised into be- 
coming a benefactor and bringing joy into the life of 
some other human being, — some innocent child per- 
haps, — seems to be really greater, even for his low 
nature, than that which he gets from indulgence in his 
favorite vice; and it is by bringing habitual evildoers 
to feel the satisfaction of playing a beneficent part in 
the life of some fellow being or in the promotion of some 
public interest, that the most successful reformatory 
work has been done. When in the narrow mind of the 
self-centered egoist a perception is at last awakened 
of the pleasure which comes from moral conduct when 
it is adopted, not under protest, because one must do 
so, nor yet as a matter of habitual routine, but from 
the exhilarating joy of working with and for others 
(thus contributing to the good of that large whole of 
which his individual physical life is itself a part) — 
then even he finds to his surprise that his greatest hap- 
piness, his highest pleasure, comes from the satisfaction 
of his moral instincts. 

But even if this could not be shown, if, on the con- 
trary, it were proven that strongly immoral natures 
were so incapable of deriving pleasure from any other 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 143 

than immoral and non-moral pleasures, that egoism must 
with them always be immoral in its outcome, it would 

still be true that for normal individuals the 
tWes C are y the a ~ greatest happiness is to be found in moral 
companiment" pleasures. Let us remember that no 
progressTand simple sensuous pleasure is in itself im- 
th/emSai 3 moral; it is at most unmoral, although 
ty,inteii<Khud~ indulgence in it may be immoral when it 
Fn gfnlr a rbe St can on ^ De nac ^ D ^ ig norm g others or by 
moramy Ve t0 destroying the balance, the fine temper, 

of one's own life. As man advances be- 
yond the brute and the savage in complexity of 
organization, emotional sensitiveness and responsive- 
ness, and intellectual power, the sources of possible 
pleasure which lie open to him are ever increasing, but 
they are dependent upon the enlargement of his sympathe- 
tic capacity, — his increased ability to feel an interest 
in, and so in some measure to understand, what lies 
outside his immediate self, his growing power to recog- 
nize the relation between himself and all else that exists. 
For sympathy (in the large sense in which, for the lack 
of a better, I use the term) is as truly the condition of 
intellectual, as it is of emotional and moral, development. 
We cannot begin to understand a new object presented 
to our consciousness until we have recognized some- 
thing in it akin to something that we have already 
made our own: it must be akin to some part of our 
present mental furniture or it cannot be added thereto; 
it must remain incomprehensible, outside of our ken. 
It is to me a wonderfully illuminating thought that in 
sympathy we have the means and the measure of all 



144 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

human growth, — physical, intellectual, moral, and he- 
donistic. In proportion as members of little clans 
feel their oneness with men outside the clan, do petty 
hordes grow into great and powerful tribes. In pro- 
portion as man recognizes the community of life be- 
tween himself and the rest of the organic world, and 
thus becomes able to interpret each in the light of the 
other, and in proportion as he recognizes that the 
fundamental principles in accordance with which his 
own nature develops, and which his own mental pro- 
cesses reflect, regulate also the orderly transformations 
of the whole Universe, organic and inorganic, in that 
measure does his intellectual horizon expand. And 
just as it is the recognition of our community of nature 
with that which is external to and beyond our individual 
selves, upon which our wisdom is based, so is it out of 
the recognition of the corresponding community of 
interest that our morality develops. And, finally, 
through this physical, intellectual and moral develop- 
ment by means of which all that is becomes a part of 
our life, do we attain that richness of life which we 
name happiness. The more perfectly we come to recog- 
nize that that of which we are a part, and in harmony 
with which we must therefore order our individual 
lives, is not merely a household, a family or a class, a 
district or a country, mankind, or even the organic 
world or the world of spirit; but that nothing less than 
all of the Universe is the whole in the perfection of 
which we are to find our own happiness, — the more 
successful we shall be in living beautiful, happy lives. 
But for our present purpose it is only necessary to recog- 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 145 

nize that wide sympathy is at once the natural out- 
growth of intellectual progress and the basis of morality; 
when we have apprehended this truth we cannot fail 
to see that man's progress in civilization must in the 
long run be a moral progress. 

When it was stated above that a normal man needs 
but to experience moral pleasures to prize them above 

all others, this assertion was not intended 
«on ofmoriT to carry with it the implication that he 
no e t a makI us es w h° h as tested moral pleasure becomes 
KEXSS to indifferent to purely sensuous and other 
but a asauthe non-moral pleasures. The being of whom 
potent kiiy re tms were true would not be a normal man. 
former^our 16 Food and drink and a woman's embraces 
blheightened are s ^ necessary to the complete happi- 
moJafJontri- 11 " ness of civilized man; and the smell of 
pleasures? 1 * 1 sw eet odours, the hearing of agreeable 

sounds, and, in general, the due exercise 
of all the faculties of his nature — non-moral as well as 
moral — contribute to his well-being. And it is also 
true that with advancing civilization comes the possi- 
bility of a higher degree of pleasure from certain non- 
moral sources than could have been enjoyed at a lower 
stage of human development : such intellectual pleasures 
as are afforded by the advancement of science, and 
many of our higher aesthetic pleasures, play a much 
greater part in civilized, than they could in primitive 
life; and the love of power can find opportunities for 
gratification in the great world of civilization that 
would be quite impossible in the narrow circle of savage 
life. But all these non-moral pleasures are 



146 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

means to moral enjoyment; and the intelligent man, 
knowing of these moral possibilities, will naturally seek 
to enhance his happiness by going on to the moral 
pleasures to which the non-moral ones may contribute. 
The man of vigorous intellect and fine artistic taste, 
the possessor of power over his fellows, can double the 
satisfaction he draws from these advantages by using 
them to bring happiness to his fellows. Every pleasure 
can be enhanced by a moral association; and the man 
of real wisdom, whose mind has been enlarged and whose 
feelings have been deepened by even so inadequate a 
knowledge of the Universe as is possible for us today, 
must inevitably grasp after these moral pleasures. 
Even our pleasure in food and drink, in fragrant odours 
and sweet sounds, is increased by having some one to 
participate with us in the enjoyment of them. And 
if this be true of the lower, sensuous pleasures, how 
much more true it is of the higher ones! How slight 
the pleasure of solving a physical or mathematical 
problem the solution of which has no practical value 
to any human being, as compared with the exhilaration 
of solving a problem the solution of which is of direct 
service to one's fellow beings! And what is true in 
this case is true throughout — all non-moral pleasures 
may be enhanced by moral associations. 

The notion that if men were allowed to please them- 
selves their lives would be essentially immoral, is fun- 
damentally false. The unnatural monster supposed is 
as untrue to life as the inert being the economists 
used to talk about, known as the economic man, from 
whose constitution they had omitted one of the 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 147 

strongest traits of human nature, — characteristic indeed 
of most, if not all, highly organized being, — the love of 
exercise, the natural impulse to exercise 
h£ppi^ s S ki ls the faculties of one's nature and especially 
else of e aii e the~ to engage in that kind of activity in which 
n a a C ture! S an f d h his one's physical or mental condition fits one 
Sl auai a ni to succeed. Of the Frankenstein product 
furtheVresuT 6 °f the economist's laboratory, on the con- 
mereiy keeping trary, it was supposed that he would never 
and ne^el s in ^t hand or foot except for the purpose of 
Kdemand-" picking up a dollar, and that the extent of 
shin have t a^ at n ^ s activity would be in inverse proportion 
be'recognized 1 to the square of his distance from the gold 
outsWeoThim- ^ e on ^ magnet which could overcome 
happiness de- ^is i nei "tia) and in direct proportion to its 
mands moral volume! The fact is, nevertheless, that 

achievement. 

the normal human being, far from being 
inert, delights in exercise, — although of course this 
healthy instinct may be crushed out of an over- 
worked drudge, and although a being endowed with 
intellect and feelings would soon lose zest for physical 
exercise carried on purely for its own sake. And this 
last mentioned consideration is not without bearing 
upon the relations of egoism to morality. While man's 
physical nature demands the exercise of various muscles 
and nerves, his intellectual and emotional nature de- 
mands the achievement of some farther result than 
that of merely keeping in healthy condition the muscles 
and nerves brought into play. The most enthusiastic 
lover of nature and of physical exercise will have less 
zest for a walk through a charming countryside, blessed 



148 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

with the purest of air, but through which he has rambled 
day after day, for weeks and months, merely as 
a physical recreation, than he will for a new walk over 
a road much less agreeable in itself but at the end of 
which there is some special thing for him to accomplish. 
All sensuous and non-moral pleasures in the world 
soon pall and lose most of their charm if he who may 
enjoy them is not arriving at something, if he cannot 
persuade himself that he is doing, accomplishing some- 
thing. This is a psychological fact that needs but to 
be stated to be recognized as true. The observation, 
if not the experience, of almost every adult must con- 
firm this. But there is another fact of the truth of 
which my observation has convinced me, although it 
may not at first blush seem so indisputable as the 
preceding one; and that is that the man with whom 
we are acquainted (I know not whether it could be 
asserted of his remote ancestor living in a very small 
group, in whom the social instinct was less developed) 
not only feels the need of accomplishing something, but 
sooner or later he becomes very much bored if what he 
accomplishes has no value for any one but himself. He 
must not only accomplish something, but must accom- 
plish something the value of which will be recognized 
by someone besides himself (or, in other words, some- 
thing which has a moral worth). 

It is true that the inventor or scientific discover 
may continue to labor away at that to which no one 
of his contemporaries attributes any value; but this 
is unquestionably a hardship for him, depriving him of 
the pleasure and stimulus that contemporary appre- 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 149 

ciation would give; and he finds the satisfaction which 
sustains him in his work in the thought that, when he 
shall have succeeded, his work will have a value for 
posterity if not for his contemporaries. It is true also 
that the less socially developed being sometimes con- 
trives for a while to quiet this altruistically-working 
part of his egoism by petting a dog or by making pre- 
sents to his mistress. But this rudimentary altruism 
never suffices for the normal, the average man. Sooner 
or later the altruistic-instinct-which-makes-a-part-of- 
of-his-egoism must lead him to more truly social and 
moral activity. The rule is that however deeply in- 
fatuated and completely lost in his mistress the de- 
voted lover may be, after he has once won her he begins 
to take interest in other things. And it is well for his 
happiness in his marriage that this is so, since other- 
wise he could not hold his wife's love. For the love 
of a human being is much more than lust. The latter 
is non-moral but the former is a moral emotion. There 
must be moral worth as well as physical charm in what 
we love. However gallant a cavalier, and though he 
were in his own person a veritable Adonis, no man 
could hold the love of the most ordinary woman, much 
less of a superior one, if his mind and heart were so con- 
tracted, his moral nature so undeveloped, that he 
cared nothing for the interests of mankind or for aught 
in the Universe outside of his lady's boudoir. 

Take it from what point we may, however we ap- 
proach the subject, the truth always reappears that 
since he is a social being, man is also a moral being, 
and that in proportion as he is really true to his own 



150 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

interests will he be true to those of mankind, will he be 
loyal to morality. 

"To thine own self be true, 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man." 

It seems quite clear to me that the true interests of 

the individual man and of the whole of which he is a 

part — whether that whole be family, race, 

The true in- nation, mankind or the universe — do not 

terests of the 

individual and conflict; and that the same thine is true 

of the whole of ° 

which he is a a s between one of these lesser wholes and 

part are identi- .... . 

cai. so are the the larger whole that mcludes it, as be- 

mterests of all ° 

lesser wholes in tween the people of a city and those of the 

nature with the f , 

greater whole state, or as between the people of one 

of which they . \ 

are a part. nation and the commonwealth of nations 
with which it has relations. So far as one 
of the units is purely artificial or accidental, and there- 
fore temporary, and its interests do not properly re- 
present those of its constituent parts, there may of 
course be a conflict. Thus it is possible that the inter- 
ests of an artificial state, such as the conglomerate 
known as the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, might not 
be identical with the best interests of the commonwealth 
of civilized nations of which it is one of the constituent 
parts; but the true interests of the people of Austria, 
Hungary, Bohemia, Bosnia, etc., would nevertheless be 
found to be in agreement with the true interests of 
Europe and the civilized world as a whole. 

But our interest is primarily in the relation between 
the wellbeing of the individual man and that of the 
whole of mankind, or of a part thereof considered as 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 151 

a social group. Here, while there may be a conflict 
between the seeming, the superficially estimated inter- 
ests, there can be no conflict between the true, the 
higher interests. 

As bearing upon this question, we must not forget 

that it is from his higher sensibilities, including his 

moral affections and his appreciation of 

Not in mere moral beauty, that man derives his great- 

eristence^buf est happiness; and one of the corollaries 

i?fe r ) < is n hipp < i- of this is that il is not in len 9 th of days, 
nes's found. but in f u u ness f lif e , that we find our 

happiness. Hence it is that even when 
the good of his fellows demands that an individual 
shall give up some selfish pleasure, the very renunciation 
of the lower pleasure, which cannot be innocently 
enjoyed at the expense of his fellows' welfare, opens 
the way into a larger and nobler, and therefore a hap- 
pier life, of which perhaps the selfish egoist had not 
previously dreamed. 

And further than this there is the consideration, 
too often ignored by the preacher of self-sacrifice, that 

a seeming good to the social whole attained 
Undue sacrifice by too great a sacrifice of individual inter- 

of the mdividu- J _ & 

ai is hostile to es t s i s not really for the ultimate advance- 

the good of ^ 

those for whom ment of the social whole itself. And it 

the sacrifice is 

made. goes without saying that the same thing 

is true as regards the sacrifice of one in- 
dividual for another. This is the truth that the in- 
dividualistic school of social philosophers have felt so 
deeply that they have not always been able to express 
it with due moderation. Take an extreme case. A 



152 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

community might be raised from grinding poverty 
into a high degree of comfort and prosperity by redu- 
cing its numbers nearly one half. The shortest and 
most effective way to do this might be to kill the inferior 
nine-twentieths of the population. But the instinct 
of humanity which would prevent such a drastic 
course is justified also by considerations of expediency, 
when expediency is considered in its highest — which is 
its truest — sense. For "man does not live by bread 
alone," and a material prosperity acquired at the cost 
of one's finer sensibilities could not but degrade the 
community it was intended to benefit, and in large 
measure unfit its members for the highest human 
development, the most beautiful lives. Sooner or 
later it would be found that the seeming benefit carried 
with it a curse, and that the community would really 
have made greater progress in civilization and happiness 
had it not taken "the short cut." On the other hand, 
it is probably true that had a fairly prosperous com- 
munity lost in a single generation, not nine twentieths, 
but ten twentieths of its population, and these not the 
inferior, but the better, the abler, the braver and more 
t magnanimous half, in the course of a struggle against 
barbarous and blood-thirsty foes that had only been 
prevented from annihilating or enslaving the communi- 
ty by the sacrifice of its noblest sons, — who had willing- 
ly laid down their lives in this cause, — in this case the 
existence of the remnant, that had thus been preserved 
by the splendid courage and perseverance and the 
noble deaths of its best citizens, would be so lifted up 
and inspired by the contemplation of the heroism of 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 153 

its departed brethren, and the feeling of fellowship 
with them, that this inferior half of the original com- 
munity would rise to a plane of material and spiritual 
civilization and a condition of happiness that would be 
not inferior to, and possibly even higher than that 
which would have been attained by the whole com- 
munity had it not had this baptism of fire. In this 
latter case, although half, and that the abler half of 
the community, is gone, and has in one sense sacrificed 
itself for the community, yet in the absolute sense, 
because this sacrifice was a voluntary one, it was no 
sacrifice i. e. it was only a sacrifice of lower to higher 
satisfactions (the only sense in which voluntary sacri- 
fice has any worth, or indeed any meaning). Those 
who sacrificed their lives for the cause were happier, 
in their life and death considered as a whole, than had 
they lived longer but as part of an enslaved com- 
munity. 

Thus it becomes more and more evident, the more 
earnestly and thoroughly we study the conditions of 
m „ . life and the constitution of the Universe, 

The Universe i • • • 

is essentially that we live m a moral world, i. e., m a 

moral in its . . 

constitution; wo rid m which the noblest conduct brings 

i.e. the interests . ° 

of both the about the greatest happmess, not alone 

individual and . . 

the whole of tor the world at large but tor the mdividual 

which it is a . 

part, of both the actor, the true interests ot the part and 
greater unit, the whole are identical. The old parable 
that temperate of the belly and the members applies here. 
the good of Neither the highest development of the 
never regard- individual nor that of society is found in 
the sacrifice of the other, but the interests 
of both the part and the whole, of the less and the greater 



154 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

unit, are found in that moderate endeavor for the good 
of both which is never regardless of either. The master 
mariners of the ship of state must never consider any 
one of the crew as a mere instrument for the accom- 
plishment of the voyage. The success of the voyage 
must be considered with reference to the good of every 
soul on board. It is right that as individuals we should 
try to live healthy and joyous lives, not ashamed to 
seek our own happiness (as the morbid school of ethi- 
cists would have us), but considerate also of the happi- 
ness of others as well as of ourselves, and remembering 
that the surest foundation for our own individual 
happiness is the happiness and wellbeing of mankind — 
and indeed of all in the universe that has life, so far as 
the higher development of life is not conditioned by 
the destruction of lower forms. No man can be happy 
alone. Not he who stands far above his fellows on the 
top of a pillar is the happy man, but he whose position 
is at the apex of a human pyramid, and who therefore 
has companions who are almost on an equality with 
him in richness of life, while these again are in direct 
sj'mpathetic relations with still larger numbers who 
are only a little less noble and happy than themselves, 
and so on down to the humblest, the least gifted of our 
brethren. That seeming elevation which would lift 
a man out of touch with his fellows, and make com- 
munications with them difficult or impossible, would 
be conducive neither to his own happiness nor to human 
progress. It is only as we can pull others up with us, 
share with them the benefits of our elevation, that our 
elevation is desirable either for ourselves or for mankind. 
Picture to yourself the situation of an unusually gifted 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 155 

savage educated to a plane of intellectual and moral 
culture that makes him regardless of the superstitions 
of his own people and makes him writhe at the con- 
templation of the cruelty and grossness of their lives, 
if he were left alone on an island with no companions 
but his savage fellow tribesmen. If there are none 
standing at intermediate stages between the low savag- 
ery, ignorance and superstitions of the average tribes- 
man and the level of our poor civilized native, there 
will be little that he can do for his kinsmen save to 
afford them a feast. And if they do not promptly 
put an end to his troubles by eating this sacrilegious 
traitor to the traditions of his people, how sad and 
lonely his life must be! Something of the tragedy of 
such a lot may be seen in the case of our more highly 
educated and refined Indians and Negroes, who by 
their culture and our race feeling are largely cut off 
from true social intercourse both with their own race 
and with ours. It is only when their education is so 
true and broad that they know how to keep in touch 
with the less educated members of their race, and to 
reach down to them and draw them up, that they find 
their intellectual and aesthetic superiority a blessing. 

As regards our contention that intelligent egoism 

must be moral, there is one point of view that has hardly 

been suggested, which seems conclusive. 

Immorality is i i • 

always intem- Whatever be the particular instance of 

perance, and as . . 

such necessan- immorality, it is in every case at bottom 

ly hostile to the . ^ 

health and intemperance on the part of the wrongdoer, 

of those who it is a disturbance of that fine balance of 

life which is dependent upon such exercise 

of and enjoyment from each of the faculties of our 



156 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

nature as shall be consistent with the largest possible 
exercise and enjoyment of all; and as such it is of 
course prejudicial to happiness. 

There is still another aspect of the relation between 

happiness and morality, to which I would now direct 

attention. If we make a further refine- 

Egoistk and ment than we have so far made, and con- 

aitruistic and fine the term egoistic to conduct the mo- 

moral distin- . . , . ,, , . . 

guished. twe, or intention, ol which is to procure 

the pleasure or happiness of the individual, 
and use the term hedonistic, or pleasure-giving, for 
such conduct as actually achieves pleasure or happiness 
for the individual, regardless of the intention that 
directed it; and if similarly we make a distinction be- 
tween altruistic, on the one hand, and ethical or moral, 
on the other, using the former term, altru- 
c^d^ct may istie, to describe conduct that has for its 
piea d s U ur e e™or e motive the welfare of mankind, and the 
'' h e e g o£tk" h wn- latter, moral, for conduct that actually con- 
sc U ious a ai d tru^tic duces to the welfare of mankind (regard- 
fe ff ss rt s™esSd less of the motive that led to it),— we 
mora? d resuit a sna11 find ' * think, that " altruistic " conduct 
than the spon- j s f or fam w ho practises it more pleasure- 

taneous egoism r c 

tares™* 1 na " S^ vm §' or hedonistic (in the sense in which 
we have just agreed to use that term), 
than consciously "egoistic " conduct. And I should not 
be surprised to find that the converse were also largely 
true, to wit, that conscious altruistic striving is less 
"moral" (beneficent to human welfare at large) in its 
results than sane and healthy, but, being natural and 
spontaneous, largely unconscious egoism. 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 157 

At any rate, as regards the last suggestion, I have 
observed that the sane and healthy, cheerful, uncon- 
scious egoist, who lives his or her own life joyously, 
with hardly a thought of philanthropy or moral obliga- 
tion, is often the sunshine of a community, making the 
lives of others happier and more wholesome; while the 
conscientious but, alas! conscious altruist, controlled 
by an overmastering sense of duty, who is ever anxious 
to serve you and the world, is not only often felt to be 
a sad affliction, but often seems in fact to exercise a 
less beneficent influence upon society than his careless 
brother. This may be because the spontaneous activi- 
ty of a normal nature will usually take a proper direc- 
tion, and our instincts are often a better guide than 
reasonings that are based, as the latter must gener- 
ally be, upon incomplete, imperfect premises. The 
conscious ethicist is continually asking us to pause and 
consider whether the proposed conduct be really right; 
and even though we finally decide to act according to 
the original impulse, it is no longer with the same 
Joyous spontaneity ; and the constant cross-examination 
of our impulses tends, I think, to produce a morbid 
lack of confidence in our own natures, which is preju- 
dicial to healthy morality. Further than this, the being 
who is always preferring others to himself, who de- 
lights in self-sacrifice, is an unpleasant companion to 
the normally moral nature, which would prefer "turn 
about" in the matter of making sacrifices for the com- 
mon good, and would rather share his pleasures with 
the morbid altruist than enjoy them at his expense; 
while at the same time the conduct of this self-sacrificing 



158 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

individual cultivates the habit of selfishness in those 
who are naturally inclined to be inconsiderate of others. 
Again, though the cheerful egoist could hardly be 
induced to spend an hour in a sick-room, and at the 
mere suggestion makes a wry face and tells you that 
sick-rooms do not agree with his constitution and that 
he would become an invalid himself if he had to stay 
in one; while the conscientious altruist, whose private 
affairs may make it much more difficult for him to spare 
the time, willingly spends half a day with the invalid, 
makes every effort to cheer and amuse without fatiguing 
him, and anxiously seeks to anticipate every wish and 
supply every want, — yet how often it happens that 
when our light-hearted egoist does drop into the sick- 
room, and with no more than a genial greeting and 
a pleasant word to the invalid chats for a few minutes 
with the attendant about something in which he him- 
self (the egoist) happens to be interested, the atmos- 
phere of the sick-room is transformed by his cheery 
presence, the invalid is taken out of himself and experi- 
ences a mild exhilaration; and when the doctor visits 
him he is surprised to find the improvement in the 
condition of the patient who had received so little bene- 
fit from the kind and thoughtful devotion of the con- 
scientious altruist. Perhaps the explanation is in the 
fact that the very anxiety of the latter to serve and 
please impresses upon the patient that he is an invalid 
whom this good person is here to help, while the cheer- 
ful confidence of the light-hearted egoist in the pleasant- 
ness of life, and the fact that he shows no especial 
interest in the patient, have the tonic effect, upon the 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 159 

self-centered invalid, of a breath of fresh air from the 
great world without. Indeed I believe that those 
always interest and help us most who lead their own 
lives, not those who try to live ours. 

I do not wish to overemphasize the truth suggested 
by such facts as the above. But that they are facts, I 
think the experience and observation of every adult 
will have assured him; and they seem to me to suggest 
that a too lively consciousness of duty and of the 
obligation to serve others may have a tendency to 
defeat its own purpose and may really be less effective 
in blessing mankind than the spontaneous, uncon- 
sciously egoistic activity of normal, healthy members 
of society, primarily intent upon pursuing their own 
interest and enjoying life in their own way. I say 
"normal, healthy members of society;" for to such 
beings, as I think I have already sufficiently pointed 
out, conduct that would evidently be seriously harmful 
to others would in general give more pain than pleasure, 
and such conduct they would spontaneously avoid. 
But it is doubtless true, nevertheless, that the egoism 
of a being below the normal level of the society of which 
he is a member tends to be destructive to the best 
interests of that society, by reason of the insensitiveness 
of the moral nature of such an egoist. 

It should go without saying that the extent to which 
egoistic conduct is conducive to the highest interests 
of mankind is dependent upon the soundness and 
sweetness of the egoist's nature. Although the egoism 
of a healthy, happy, innocent child, who in his enjoy- 
ment of life exhibits little or no regard for others except 



160 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

as they contribute to that enjoyment, is generally 
tonic in its effect upon us and makes life brighter for 
us, yet our pleasure is certainly increased if the child's 
nature is not only sunny but sweet, if it has so fine a 
moral nature that it finds a great deal of its pleasure in 
pleasing; and it is probably true that the cheerful 
egoist's visit to the sick-room would be even more 
beneficial if his disposition were not only bright and 
joyous but so loving and kind that his presence would 
bring home to others, not only the physical beauty, and 
the opportunity for enjoyment associated therewith, 
which the world has to offer us, but also the wealth of 
love its human hearts contain. In other words, egoism 
is beneficial to the world at large in proportion as the 
egoist's nature approximates to the ideal of the Sckone 
Seele, the beautiful soul that does instinctively and 
spontaneously that which is most conducive to the 
highest welfare of mankind. But even though the 
egoist's nature be far below this ideal, if he be intelli- 
gent and well informed his egoism will tend toward 
morality. 

Let us remember that as the welfare of society is 
dependent upon the wellbeing of the members who 
compose it, and as it would be very un- 
Jf h iii7s e pro- mg economical of time and effort, and hence 
Te> e s d a b ttending prejudicial to individual and general wel- 
oSS^ler^ts! 3 far e, for Mrs. A to prefer the making of 
Mrs. B's bed to the making of her own 
(it certainly would not be practical for Mrs. A to drink 
Mrs. B's coffee for her, however altruistically disposed 
she might be), morality itself confirms the naive point 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 161 

of view of the individual, which makes himself the 
center of the world of which he is a part. Society does 
not hold you individually responsible for the welfare of 
society at large, although it of course expects you to do 
nothing actually hostile to it and, more than this, to 
help it along as far as you can do this consistently with 
your primary duty. But it does hold you individually 
responsible for the welfare of one particular member, 
yourself, and in somewhat less degree for that of those 
most immediately dependent upon you. It demands 
that you shall keep that one individual in the highest 
state of health and wellbeing possible, and that you 
shall not allow him or those who may naturally look 
to him for support to become a charge upon public or 
private charity. Even if egoistic inclinations, then, 
were not in that direction, a man's first duty would be 
to himself. The greater one's worth to society, — i. e. 
the better he is — the more imperative is this duty to 
himself. The conductor of a polar expedition or the 
competent leader of any body of men exposed to diffi- 
culties requiring exceptional caution, experience, wis- 
dom and courage on the part of the leader, upon whom 
the welfare of a ship-full or perhaps of hundreds and 
even thousands of human beings depends, is bound 
to guard his own life and health with exceptional care. 
Under normal circumstances the general who takes the 
troop-leader's place in the front line of battle is recreant 
to his duty. But while such cases may bring more 
clearly before us the primary moral duty to one's self 
that one's position in society imposes upon him, this 
duty exists in all cases. Even those who have the 



162 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

least capacity for serving others, who are physically or 
intellectually too weak, have still the primary duty of 
taking care of themselves to the extent of their power, 
of doing all that they can to relieve society from the 
burden of caring for them. 

Whether or not it be true, however, that conscious 
altruistic striving is in general less productive of whole- 
some morality than the spontaneous activity of normal, 
healthy natuires, instinctively seeking the satisfaction 
of their impulses, it seems to be the unanimous opinion 
of all observers that the individual himself attains less 
happiness when his conduct is controlled by the deliber- 
ate purpose of securing pleasure for himself than when 
he is working for some moral end with an enthusiasm 
in which he forgets himself. Nothing is more trite — 
though it is not the less true for all its triteness — than 
the observation that the conscious pleasure-seeker is 
apt to be the most discontented of human beings. The 
conscious effort to extract the maximum of pleasure 
from life and from every experience therein, and to 
reject all possible experiences that do not promise a 
large quantum of pleasure, generally begets a restless 
frame of mind, which leads its possessor to hurry from 
one occupation to another because he feels a nervous 
dread of wasting his time on the matter he has just 
taken in hand when perhaps something else might give 
him more pleasure. Imagine a butterfly that has no 
sooner alighted upon one flower than he is attracted 
to another, and so flits hungrily from one to another 
the long day through, without getting the honey from 
any of them, and you have a picture of this frame of 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 163 

mind. Or perhaps the unfortunate result of this ner- 
vous anxiety to get at the pleasure-giving elements 
in human experience and to reject everything else, may 
be even better pictured by likening the too eager 
pleasure-seeker to one who tears a rose to pieces to get 
at its fragrance, and thus destroys the possibility of 
fragrance as well as the visual beauty that he might 
otherwise have enjoyed. 

In the discussion just preceding we have come dan- 
gerously near to paradox. We have, on the one 
hand, suggested the possibility that conscious altruism 
may achieve less for morality (or the best 
ideal conduct, interests of man) than the instinctive. 

both from the ' 

morant oil and f unconscious egoism of normal, healthy 
from that of natures; and have asserted, on the other 

happiness, is 

that of the hand, that conscious egoistic effort will do 

"Beautiful & 

Soul," which, l ess f or the happiness of the individual 

loving to do . . 

that which is than self -forgetting ethical activity on his 
does good in- part. Have we not said here that ethical 

stinctively and 

spontaneously, conduct probably produces less wellbeing 
compulsion than egoistic conduct, and then asserted 

of a sense of ° . . 

duty. that egoistic conduct produces less well- 

being than ethical conduct? No, we have 
not: and that we have not been guilty of a paradox is 
true, not merely because in the first place we spoke of 
the wellbeing of the social whole and in the second 
place of the wellbeing of the individual actor, but be- 
cause (although my imperfect choice of terms may have 
failed to make this as clear as it should be made)there 
is a difference between the conscious altruism spoken 
of in the former hypothesis and the self-forgetting 



164 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

ethical activity referred to in the later assertion. By 
the former term I sought to express the self-conscious 
subordination of self to others from a sense of duty; 
and by the latter, the spontaneous attempt to achieve 
a moral end because of one's inclination thereto, not 
from any sense of duty or with any sense of self-sacri- 
fice. What both limbs of the seeming paradox have 
really agreed in suggesting is the truth of the ideal of 
the beautiful soul, Schiller's sch'one Seele, as against the 
more widely accepted notion of Kant, that there is no 
moral worth in any conduct that is not adopted in 
obedience to the sense of duty. This Kantian notion 
seems anything but true. On the contrary, the study 
of life seems to show us that love, not duty, is the 
source of that which is best; and that pleasure is the 
natural accompaniment of the free exercise of our facul- 
ties (physical, mental and emotional), and is great, 
rising into happiness, in proportion as we live largely, 
not spending all our strength in the exercise of one or 
a very few of the activities possible for us, but living 
up to the possibilities of our manhood by such a tem- 
perate exercise of each of the faculties of our nature as 
shall make possible the largest exercise of all, and thus 
enable us to enter into the most sympathetic relations 
with all that the Universe contains. It would seem 
that for those who are neither the mere means 1 to a high 
civilization, from the actual participation in which they 

*As was largely the case with the lower class of slaves in Greece, 
and as is in a measure the case with the drudge of today, the hardships 
of whose position largely prevent the widening of the intellectual 
horizon and the accompanying enlargement of one's sympathies 
which are characteristic of true civilization. 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 165 

are very largely excluded, nor its mere 'parasites, 2 the 
egotistic impulse will tend to produce moral conduct in 
proportion as the civilization in which the individual 
participates is high. — not only because the material 
and non-moral means of enjoyment demanded by a 
civilized man are dependent upon the wellbeing of the 
society in which he lives, and his fellows are disposed 
to resent and punish anything that they understand 
to be hostile to the general welfare, but also because 
the highest (i. e., the greatest) pleasure (for a civilized 
human being, at any rate) comes from the gratifica- 
tion of our social affections, which lead us to take de- 
light in producing happiness, and the satisfaction of 
our intellectual cravings for knowledge, which make 
us truthseekers. 

It is in the central importance of love, of sympathetic 
interest, as at once the source of our greatest happi- 
ness and the most efficient motive in producing what is 
morally best, that we find the explanation of the fact 
that in the case of the individual who is consciously 
striving to obtain self-gratification, whose conduct has 
as its deliberate purpose the production of pleasure 

2 As is characteristically the case with many Oriental princes of 
our own day, whose wealth and power enable them to attain a super- 
ficial acquaintance with western civilization and to appropriate many 
of its material advantages, while they are prevented from making its 
higher gains their own by the self-sufficiency which arises out of their 
traditions of irresponsible lordship over a more or less completely 
enslaved population and out of their lack of true moral and intellec- 
tual culture, since no one can appropriate the best — i. e. the emotional 
and intellectual elements — of a civilization in which his own emotional 
and intellectual life is not a factor- and as is true in less degree of some 
who are born in the midst of a high civilization but who are shut 
off by adventitious circumstances (extraordinary eminence in wealth 
and social position perhaps) from a living sympathy with it. 



166 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

for himself, not only is his pleasure diminished by his 
morbid attention to the emotions that are to be aroused 
within him by his action, — this morbid attention to the 
result to be attained being hostile to that free play of 
the faculties to which pleasure is incident, — but his 
constant attention to himself really makes it impossible 
that he should feel, to any considerable extent, those 
emotions that are the sources of the highest pleasure. 
If he gazes at a beautiful landscape, not because it is 
beautiful, but because, being beautiful, he expects it 
to give him pleasure, he can but half enjoy the land- 
scape, since his attention is divided between it and 
himself; and so it is if he works at a problem in physics 
not because he craves to know what the truth of the 
matter is, but because he believes that this exercise of 
his intellectual faculties should give him pleasure; and 
still more true is it that if he undertakes some service 
to humanity, not because his love of his fellows irre- 
sistibly impels him to it, but because he is intellectu- 
ally convinced that he will derive pleasure from serving 
his fellows, he gets but a faint shadow of the pleasure 
that would have accompanied activity of the same 
sort objectively considered, but that from the subjec- 
tive point of view would have differed immeasurably 
from this, in that it would be prompted by love of his 
fellows instead of by the selfish desire to enjoy the 
pleasure of contemplating one's self in the light of a 
philanthropist. Is not this the teaching of the First 
Epistle to the Corinthians? "Though I give my body 
to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me noth- 
ing!" A European sold into slavery by pirates may 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 167 

under compulsion render valuable service to the com- 
munity in which he is placed. He has served humanity 
but he has no tithe of the pleasure in this achievement 
that he would have had in a similar service freely per- 
formed for fellow beings whom he loved. And the ser- 
vice to humanity of the man who adopts "philan- 
thropy," not from love to his fellows, but because he 
is convinced that this is the road to happiness for him- 
self, is lacking in the essential element of joy-giving 
power — the love of the action itself — as truly as, al- 
though doubtless in less degree than, the service of 
the slave. 

Far be it from me to say, however, that moral con- 
duct deliberately adopted by a cool-headed egoist for 
the pleasure it will give him, will wholly fail of the 
desired effect. If a man has sufficient culture to 
forsee the hedonistic value of such conduct, it is un- 
questionable, not only that the contemplation of the 
beautiful landscape and the work upon the solution of 
the problem in physics, but also that the "philan- 
thropic" conduct, will give him real and considerable 
pleasure, — and the last will probably give him the 
greatest pleasure; for it is inconceivable that a man to 
whom such a means of achieving pleasure should com- 
mend itself, should be wholly devoid of affection for 
his fellows, as impossible as that he should be wholly 
lacking in aesthetic taste and intellectual curiosity; 
but the pleasure he will get will be but a fraction of 
what it would have been had he forgotten himself and 
done these things for the love of doing them. 

The above considerations will help us to understand 



168 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

how it is that the recipient of a benefit may possibly 
be less helped by it when it was prompted by altruisic 
considerations, by the thought that it was right to 
confer this benefit, by the sense of duty on the part of 
the benefactor than by a benefit that should come 
as an incident to the natural satisfaction of the bene- 
factor's egoistic impulses. The caresses and thought- 
ful attentions of an adult who feels that it is her duty 
to do every thing in her power to lighten the burdens 
of life for an unfortunate young woman who is so de- 
formed as to be no less an object of horror than of pity 
to most of her fellow beings, including even the kind 
friend whose strong sense of duty alone enables her to 
so far overcome her physical repulsion as to caress the 
unfortunate and remain in her presence, — these caresses 
and attentions will probably contribute less to the 
happiness of the deformed creature than the caresses 
and awkward services of a little child who caresses and 
waits on the unfortunate just because she, the child, 
really loves to be snuggled in the arms of the hunch- 
back and to listen to her fairy tales. The child's 
motive is egoistic, its purpose hedonistic, its aesthetic 
sensibilities in the direction in question are so little 
developed that the deformed girl seems to it only a 
little queer and interesting; and as it thoroughly enjoys 
being petted and made much of and entertained with 
beautiful stories, it rims away from its nurse and into 
the arms of the hunchback at every opportunity; and 
this purely egoistic conduct on its part probably gives 
our unfortunate the happiest moments of her life, — a 
pleasure that camiot be produced by the deft services 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 169 

and kind caresses of the friend who is actuated by a 
purely ethical motive, and who disregards the natural 
impulses of a nature peculiarly sensitive to the repul- 
siveness of physical ugliness, in order to contribute to 
the welfare of the society in which she lives. 

The truth seems to be that conduct moral in its out- 
come that is mainly altruistic in its motive, and not 
accompanied by lively hedonistic satisfaction, succeeds 
less perfectly in producing its moral result than con- 
duct likewise having a moral outcome but achieved 
without conscious altruistic intent, — for much the same 
reason that conduct hedonistic in its outcome, but 
which was the result of deliberate egoistic calculation, 
is less perfectly hedonistic than conduct having a some- 
what similar hedonistic outcome but springing from 
self -forgetting ethical impulses. The reason is that 
that is best done which is done for the love of doing it (and 
not for the love either of self or of others), as an end in 
itself, not as the means to some ulterior end; that is 
most perfectly done which is done instinctively and 
spontaneously rather than deliberately as the result of 
a process of ratiocination; that conduct is most pro- 
ductive of happiness, both for the actor and for man- 
kind, which is reasonable {i. e., in harmony with the 
laws of nature and tending to produce the desired 
result) rather than reasoned. For although the extent to 
which man can adapt means to an end is the evidence 
of his superiority over the lower animals, which, with 
little reasoning power, must generally go to the wall 
when their instincts are inadequate and fail to meet 
the situation in which they find themselves; and al- 



170 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

though the exercise of this power (as of all the other 
faculties of his nature) affords its peculiar pleasure, 
which in this case is a very high one; yet the exercise 
of the reason in the conscious adaptation of means to a 
desired end is essentially a method of meeting such new 
difficulties in man's environment as his constitution is 
not yet perfectly adapted to: and this means that the 
conscious adaptation of means to an end is an evidence 
of the imperfection of man's adaptation to the situation 
which confronts him; for he is never perfect master of 
the situation till he meets it instinctively, without hav- 
ing to think out the suitable line of conduct (just as 
the pianist is not master of his instrument so long as 
he must think what parts of the keyboard he must 
strike to produce a given combination of sounds and 
how he must manage his hands to strike these notes). 
Thus again we are brought to the conclusion that 
ideal conduct, both from the moral and from the hedon- 
istic standpoint, is only possible for the 
in proportion schone Seele, the beautiful soul that does 

to man's intel- ... . . 

Hgence and to instinctively what is right because it finds 

his knowledge # " ° 

of the actual its happiness in such conduct. But while 

conditions of , 

life will his con- the ideal of the beautiful soul may never 

duct, objective- 

i y considered, be perfectly realized, let us not forget 

approach that 

of the beautiful that all reasonable conduct approximates 

soul, whether .... . . . 

his motive be to it, whether it proceeds from the stand- 

the sense of . .. . , . . 

duty or the de- point of morality Or Of happiness. Al- 
ness, though he who seeks to do good be- 
cause it is his duty and not because he 
loves to do good, is less perfect, less loving and 
wise, than he of the beautiful soul whose natural 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 171 

love of the good leads him to perfect action, and al- 
though therefore the former's ethical conduct will give 
him less happiness, and will less perfectly achieve the 
moral good sought for, than the conduct of the latter, 
yet this striving of an intelligent being for moral ends 
must benefit mankind to some extent, and it is also 
true that this beneficence of a moral being must give no 
little pleasure to the benefactor himself, must tend to 
make him happy. The man who so acts will learn 
the meaning of the teaching that he who is ready to 
lose his life shall find it. And on the other hand, al- 
though he whose conduct is directed by the search 
for personal happiness, and to whom the good of the 
rest of the world is a secondary matter, may experience 
something of the truth of the saying that he who would 
save his life shall lose it, inasmuch as his pleasure in 
all that he does and experiences will be greatly diminish- 
ed by his morbid attention to himself and his own 
emotions, yet in proportion to his intelligence must he 
seek his happiness along moral lines, and, doing so, he 
will both secure some pleasure for himself and accom- 
plish something for the moral wellbeing of the world. 
In other words, in proportion to a man's intelligence 
and to his knowledge of the actual conditions of life 
will his conduct, objectively considered, approach that 
of the "beautiful soul," whether his motive be the 
sense of duty or the desire for happiness. 

If this be true, — and of its truth I feel as sure as of 
my own existence, — what a helpful truth it is for 
humanity, and how important it is that mankind should 
be educated to appreciate it! What a burden its re- 



172 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

cognition would lift from the heart of many a sad-faced 

preacher of duty, and what an illumination it would 

throw upon the path of the seeker after 

Hence the im- happiness! When, instead of resting our 

portance of ex- m ° 

ercising aii our faith upon the tradition of our ancestors 

faculties in the 

effort to gain and 'making of our practical life a waver- 

the most per- . . 

f ect comprehen- mg, unworthy compromise between the 
verse. acceptance of the selfish maxims of a 

superficial empiricism, on the one hand, 
and obedience to an alleged miraculous revelation, on 
the other, we shall awaken to the importance and the 
dignity of life here and now and shall look existence 
frankly in the face, not seeking for miraculous guidance 
nor depending upon authority, — even though it be the 
authority of the wisest and best, the noblest and most 
loving being that ever walked the earth, — but rather 
going ourselves to the fountain of truth and source of 
all true inspiration, and seeking in the great Book of 
Nature, wherein, and wherein alone, it is written in 
characters of living light, the revelation of the nature 
and will of that Eternal Existence in which we live and 
move and have our being, — then and only then shall we 
learn to live aright! 

Then, among other things, we shall learn for our- 
selves (and what we learn for ourselves we act upon) 

that the truth expressed in the New Testa- 
tor the°ri35 ves men t with such poetic force is a truth for 
power U never every-day life, finding its realization here 
hf P pfne e s S s h i5 so and now,— that he who shall strive for the 
cr°Jafes b k. in " right with all his heart, will not sacrifice 

his happiness by so doing, but will increase 
it; and that he who would enjoy life to the uttermost 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 173 

will not have to throw his finer scruples aside, but that 
his life will be rich and happy in proportion as he is true 
to his highest spiritual insights. 

Many of us have gotten far enough to admit this 
as an abstract intellectual truth, but few of us have 
yet come to feel its truth so deeply that we are ready 
to trust the guidance of our lives to it. Practically we 
are infidels ; this is one of the truths as to which we 
feel, with George Eliot's Mr. Brooke, that "it won't do 
to carry it too far." "A man who would succeed 
in life," we say, "must not be too scrupulous." But 
what is success? In what shall we succeed by stifling 
our finest feelings? In gaining material wealth, the 
possession of which we have neither the wisdom nor 
the virtue to enjoy properly: or in gaining the reputa- 
tion of power, without the reality, since we may not 
wield for moral ends the brittle sceptre that has been 
acquired and is held upon condition of pandering to 
the evil in our fellows? Surety that only is worthy of 
the name of success which makes life richer, larger, 
nobler, sweeter, — and this we can achieve only in pro- 
portion as we develop the best that is in us, not, like 
the foolish ascetic, wholly ignoring the fundamental 
physical demands of our nature, or seeking to crucify 
the flesh in the interest of the spirit, but exercising our 
lower (that is, our more purely physical) faculties in 
such moderation as shall be consistent with the exer- 
cise and development of the highest faculties of our 
nature, that thus we may attain to that large sympathy 
with all that is which shall make us wise, loving and 
fearless. 



174 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

I am no optimist. Whether or not this is the best 
of all possible worlds, seems to me a silly, meaningless 
question. We have not to do with a 
divMuaTmay number of possible worlds but with the 
S2rfa«3iSi ct one Universe as it is. But my study of 
fsfenc^ofTvU reality, of psychological law on the one 
condition of a nan d and of physical law on the other, has 
£SJ, d 5£ ST made me a meliorist. Evil exists; and so 
happk/'th^ l° n g as conscious individuals have a part 
pi d hTes°a r nd y th; to P la y in the Universe I am disposed to 

more moral our tllmk that it mugt exist; gmce eyi ] ig the 

name we give to relations wherein one is 
not in complete harmony with his environment, and 
life itself in all its myriad functions seems but to be the 
continual re-adaptation of the individual to the sur- 
rounding conditions, without which constant necessity 
for re-adaptation life would lose its meaning — we would 
have only that negative state of existence for which 
the Buddhist has given us the name Nirvana. Let us 
not forget that happiness comes to us from the exer- 
cise of the faculties of our nature (physical, emotional 
and intellectual), and in no other way. Not by getting 
into a luxurious alcove in which he shall be secure from 
the turmoil of life, not in standing on an elevated 
platform and viewing the struggle of life from a safe 
distance, but through the most active participation 
in life, does man find his happiness. Evil exists, and 
no man, I think, may expect perfect satisfaction; but 
the Universe is so constituted that in the struggle for 
existence— which is life itself and not an evil, although 
conditioned by the existence of evil — we shall be the 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 175 

more successful the wider our outlook, the more com- 
pletely our conduct brings us into harmony with all 
that is, the more perfect our co-operation with others, 
— in a word, the more moral our lives. 

My meliorism is further supported by the conviction 
that those who are not yet high enough in the scale of 

being to be instinctively virtuous will be- 
natures e t>e-° w come more virtuous in proportion as their 
whatmo^ e " intelligence is (symmetrically) developed 
portion* f they an d their knowledge becomes wider and 
Th C e°r™isTo Se e r i- deeper. Such increase in knowledge and 
Soshlon^that wisdom will indubitably be accompanied 
aTe'vfdence'of by more perfect emotional responsiveness. 
HgeSwhen" Most of the immoral conduct that is not 
sUtof°uica- re " mere ly the instinctive expression of racial 
contr y oi f .° r self " naD i ts acquired in an earlier day, when 

such conditions were more beneficial than 
harmful, results from an imperfect comprehension of 
the evil it may cause, from a failure to understand why 
the conduct is wrong, from the undeveloped condition 
of the imaginative power and emotional sensitiveness 
of the wrong-doer, who is really incapable of picturing 
to himself distant or remote evil, either to others or to 
himself, with sufficient vividness to give it appreciable 
magnitude in comparison with the immediate good to 
himself that occupies the foreground of his conscious- 
ness. The harm he does to others and the eventual 
injury to himself often appear to him of no greater 
weight than the killing of a few mosquitoes would to 
a humane man who should thus defend himself against 
the ravages of the little pests. In each case the evil is 



176 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

regarded by its perpetrators as a necessary evil, a mere 
trifle in comparison with the good which the perpe- 
trator is thereby enabled to attain for himself. 

It does not seem to me that we need be morally dis- 
couraged even though it be admitted that there are 
men who find more pleasure in the gratification of their 
lower, non-moral appetites, yes, in the intemperate, 
and therefore immoral, gratification of their animal 
appetites, than hi any kind of moral activity. It goes 
without saying that anything that a man does which 
gives him any pleasure, gives him more pleasure than 
that which he does not do! As yet these men have not 
had the experience of moral conduct that would ac- 
quaint them with the pleasure to be derived therefrom. 
Even if we should compel them to conduct moral in its 
outcome, it would not be altruistic conduct on their part; 
and so long as they should act in this way under com- 
pulsion, they could not derive that emotional satis- 
faction from the doing of the thing in question which 
gives to moral conduct its highest hedonistic value, 
and it would doubtless take considerable time for them 
to learn the practical physical advantage to themselves 
of having conducted themselves morally. It may, 
however, at first, seem fatal to our melioristic convic- 
tion, to have to admit that men of relatively high (but 
certainly warped) intellectual power, and having un- 
usual knowledge along certain lines, or a knowledge 
of the world at large that is really quite wide but not 
profound, seem sometimes to prefer to moral conduct 
the gratification of their ambition or of some of their 
animal passions, even at the expense of others. But 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 177 

even such a case is largely one of ignorance, of an un- 
fortunate habit as to the direction in which to look for 
happiness, and partly also a case of deficient intelli- 
gence. If the knowledge of reality possessed by these 
men, exact as it may be so far as it goes, were wider, or 
if, wide as it may be, it were profounder; if their intelli- 
gence, instead of being highly developed along certain 
lines alone, were thoroughly sane, symmetrical and 
healthy; or if they could once be gotten into the habit 
of moral conduct, so that they should know from ex- 
perience the happiness to be derived therefrom, — it 
seems to me certain that they would prefer the moral 
to the immoral life. 

The moral outlook for man is, then, a hopeful one; 
for it is true, as Socrates maintained, that men may be 

made more moral by education, if only that 
fo^man^hope^ term be understood in its true sense, — 
may S be C m£de n the development and cultivation, not of 
^eTucation. the intellect alone, but of the physical, 

emotional and intellectual nature, by pro- 
viding suitable exercise for the health and efficiency of 
the body, and by enlarging the intellectual horizon and 
strengthening and purifying the emotions, while guid- 
ing them into right channels, through the presentation 
to our young of such an outline and synopsis of human 
achievements in art and science as shall give them an 
approximately true Weltanschauung, as shall give them 
a fairly adequate idea of what has so far been learned 
as to the individual man's relations to the several 
wholes of which he is a part, — the family, the race, the 
state, the commonwealth of civilized nations, mankind, 



178 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

the organic world, the Universe itself, — and as to the 
nature of that Universe, its variety and its beauty, its 
wonderful complexity and yet its uniformity as exhibited 
in the laws of nature. Such an education alone — one 
that shall care for the body and feed the mind — can 
contribute to healthy moral development. Morality 
that is purely traditional, or that has to be taught 
directly as such, and that does not find its confirmation 
in the feelings that spring out of a knowledge of the 
Universe and of our relatidns to the various parts of 
this all-embracing whole, is necessarily inferior, and is 
likely to be either wooden or fantastic. The idea of 
"teaching morality" by itself, of awakening healthy 
moral sentiment that shall not be based upon a sym- 
pathetic appreciation of the relation of the individual 
to society and to the Universe outside mankind (and 
for this it is necessary to know not a little about that 
Universe), is like plucking a flower from root and stem 
and expecting it to live and grow. The blossom may 
retain its fragrance for a time, but its vitality is gone. 
And so it is with the morality of precept that does not 
spring out of, and find its support in, our own feeling of 
oneness with the life outside our little individual selves, 
that comes from a sympathetic knowledge of the world 
of which we are a part. "Schooling," it is true, may 
make one more capable of committing crime, as it is 
likely to increase one's ability in many directions; it is 
indubitable that a knowledge of penmanship is a con- 
dition for the commission of the crime of forgery. But 
he would be a fool as well as a most pitiable coward, that 
would therefore forbid children to be taught to write. 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 179 

And whatever may be true of "schooling," the educa- 
tion that makes for wisdom makes also for virtue, 
while it makes no less for happiness. 

Here I would emphasize again the truth that virtue 
never really demands a sacrifice of happiness! At 
most it only demands the sacrifice of the lesser to the 
greater pleasure. The man who gives up a fortune 
and a commanding position in society, and with it the 
possibility of marrying the woman he loves, and lives 
in poverty, because of conscientious scruples, is happier 
than he could have been without his own self-respect. 
Not alone virtue, but his happiness demanded that he 
should be able to enjoy his own self-respect and hold 
his head erect before God and man. He is, it may 
well be, less happy than he would have been could he 
have had at once self-respect, wealth, and the life- 
companionship of her who was to him the dearest of 
women. But that was out of his power, and he chose 
that which would give him, not the greatest happiness 
conceivable (with which ethical choice has nothing to 
do!) but the greatest happiness possible for him. So it is 
always. Even though one's nature be low, the virtuous 
course will not involve in the case of such a one a sacri- 
fice of happiness. The business partner of the man 
of whom we have just spoken, who having a lower, less 
sensitive nature, chose to keep the fortune that was in 
his possession but to which he had no moral right, also 
chose, no doubt, what seemed to him at the time to 
promise the greatest happiness possible for him. But 
had he foreseen that no amount of pleasure purchased 
at the expense of self-respect is equal to that which 



180 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

self-respect gives, he would have chosen the other alter- 
native; and had he done so he ivould have been happier 
than it will now be possible for him to be. He may be 
sleeker and fatter than his former partner, but he can 
never know the happiness that the other will enjoy. 
A low nature can never enjoy the height of happiness 
that is possible for a high nature. It may also be true 
that the former is saved by his more insensitive nature 
from suffering as keenly as the latter can. But to this 
it may be answered that we measure men and things 
rather by their positive qualities than by means of 
negatives, and that no noble nature would forgo its 
sensitive responsiveness to that which is most beautiful 
and best, in order to be rid of its sensitiveness to evil. A 
man will not change places with a polyp for the sake 
of the latter's cold-blooded incapacity for agony (and 
ecstacy!). Let us bear in mind, when the unrighteous 
seem to triumph, that a clam, even at high tide, is in- 
capable of the happiness possible for a higher animal 
such as the dog; that a hog can never be as happy as a 
man! 

One thing more. We have already seen that the 

conception of ethical conduct develops with the growth 

of knowledge and the widening of human 

Morality be- relations. To the savage, that is moral 

comes higher, , 

the greater the which subserves the wellbemg oi his petty 

whole becomes . . 

of which man tribe; no human being outside the tribe 

recognizes him- . 

self as a part, has any moral claims upon him. As tribes 
confederate, the sense of moral responsibil- 
ity spreads outside, to take in the members of the fed- 
eration; and gradually it extends in some measure to 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 181 

all of the same race, and at length to mankind and to 
our fellow members of the animal kingdom. But this 
extension is imperfect. The most highly civilized 
peoples of today still feel, as a rule, a very limited 
moral obligation in reference to foreign peoples. The 
discussions of national policy in reference to commerce 
and industry, which appear in high-class magazines as 
well as in the daily press, make this limited sense of 
fellowship and of moral obligation very evident. Yet 
although the conception of morality varies with time, 
place, and people, and sometimes departs considerably 
from the root idea and becomes quite fantastic, it may 
still be fairly asserted that the underlying meaning of 
moral conduct is, that which is conducive to the high- 
est wellbeing of the whole of which one is a part; and 
therefore our morality ivill be higher and broader accord- 
ing as our conception of that whole expands. 

Only the members of the highest races recognize 

their fellowship with all mankind, and only a few of 

the most cultivated individuals of the 

mora!it| h and higher races have any adequate sense of 

the highest hap- the fact that the whole of which they are 

pmess require t ~ 

the recognition a part is nothing less than the Universe 

of our unity . ° 

with ail that is. itself, past, present and future. Until a 
better education, with the wider knowledge, 
deeper thought, and more sensitive feeling incident 
thereto, makes us all more conscious of the largeness 
of our true self and the infinity of our interests, no very 
high morality can prevail. But even though we are 
still as a rule too dull of apprehension to perceive the 
evil to ourselves therein, it remains true that one acts in 



182 RELIGIO DOCTORIS 

hostility to his own hedonistic interests (or, in other 
words, decreases his own possibilities of happiness) 
who inflicts an unnecessary injury upon any living be- 
ing, though that being live at the antipodes, whether 
it be by directly or indirectly bringing evil upon him 
or by depriving him of an opportunity he would other- 
wise have had; and that he also injures himself who 
unnecessarily does aught that shall dimmish the beauty 
and perfection even of inanimate nature, though it be 
in that part of the world most distant from that in 
which he himself dwells! 

The corollaries of this truth are infinite. It means 

that selfishness (not the seeking of one's own good; 

that is innocent and right; but the seeking 

Love, which is of one's own good in disregard of all else 

sympathy, is ° ° 

the secret both and at the expense of the good of others), 

of morality and \ . ° " 

of happiness, whether it be individual, local, or national, 
never "pays." Some day we shall see 
clearly that the "public-spirited townsman," for in- 
stance, who secures for his own town a public institu- 
tion that the interest of the state demand should be 
located elsewhere, is not only not a good citizen, but 
that he has injured his fellow townsmen as well as the 
people of the state at large and himself; and similarly 
that a national policy that is injurious to the people 
of other nations is hostile to the true interests of the 
citizens of the nation that adopts it, interferes with 
the most healthy and symmetrical development on 
their part, and decreases their happiness. For love is 
the law of life, the law of development (physical, mental 
and emotional), the law at once of morality and of happi- 



HAPPINESS AND MORALITY 183 

ness; and only as we love largely, sympathizing more 
and more fully with all that is, can we attain, either 
for ourselves or for those that are nearest to us, to the 
fullness of happiness that might be ours in the realiza- 
tion of the Beauty of the Universe! 



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